Lucky Voice boss counts on Square Mile smash hit

Charlie Elek viewed the schedule for the recent Fifa World Cup games with some degree of trepidation. Two England games, both played in the evening, in the space of a week. For the managing director of karaoke bar chain Lucky Voice, that did not bode well for business. But Elek needn’t have worried. The first full week of December turned out to be the company’s best yet for revenue taken across its four UK venues, he says, reassuring him and the team that there are enough people who want to belt out Bohemian Rhapsody on a Saturday night rather than cheer on the Three Lions.  It was an unexpected achievement, but despite the company’s name, Elek knows better than to put it down to luck. Since the business was set up almost 20 years ago by lastminute.com co-founder Martha Lane Fox and musician Nick Thistleton, Lucky Voice has survived the global financial crisis, found a way to balance a bricks-and-mortar business with an online venture, and navigated lockdowns and the Covid-19 pandemic. Now, as the team prepares to open its fifth UK venue – it also has one in Dubai’s Grand Millennium Hotel – Elek is pushing to pick up the pace of expansion. By the end of 2024 he wants to have doubled the company’s UK locations and is eyeing new sites not only in London but also in cities including Manchester, Birmingham, Liverpool and Bristol. By the time the next World Cup rolls around in 2026, Elek and colleagues hope to have an even greater alternative offering for a night out. A whole new world Lucky Voice will open its new venue at Devonshire Square, EC2, in late January. The company is repurposing 4,800 sq ft on the lower-ground and ground floors of the Nuveen, PFA and WeWork-owned 1 The Avenue, also known as 10 Devonshire Square, which was most recently a Pitt Cue restaurant. It’s only somewhat off the beaten track – Bishopsgate is a minute or two’s walk away – and marks the company’s first venue in the City of London.  The Square Mile is changing. The City of London Corporation is eager for the capital’s financial heart to evolve into somewhere that (whisper it) normal people might even want to go to at the (brace yourself) weekend. Elek has no doubts that his business will work in the City and points to the company’s unexpected weekend success in Holborn as proof. “When we opened [in Holborn], we said we knew Thursdays would be absolutely nailed down, with so many corporate parties, but that Saturdays would be very, very quiet,” he says. “Even though our Saturdays are packed in other venues, there would be no footfall, and so we budgeted for huge Thursdays and Fridays and very quiet Saturdays. But Saturdays were our busiest day, and continue to be now.” He adds: “I still love to walk down Chancery Lane at 11pm or midnight on a Saturday, and it’s so quiet. Then you go downstairs into Lucky Voice and there are hundreds of people having the time of their life.” The City could hold a similar story, Elek predicts – corporate bookings driving weeknight activity and a greater focus on revellers come the weekend.  Don’t stop me now The network of Lucky Voice venues initially grew in fits and starts. The company opened its first site in Soho in 2005. Islington came next in 2008, followed by Brighton a year later. And then recession. “The plan at that point was to keep rolling out sites across the UK,” Elek recalls. “Unfortunately, recession hit and [Brighton] didn’t quite perform as well as we wanted it to – it now does extremely well, but at the time it didn’t. So we focused on a few other parts of the business such as the online side. But since I took over as MD, we wanted the focus to be back on the bars.” Elek joined the company in 2009, just as that downturn hit. Initially focusing on selling karaoke machines to people to use in their homes with online subscriptions, over the years he moved into the venue side of the company, taking over from Thistleton as managing director in 2017. A decade after Brighton, the company opened on Chancery Lane in Holborn in 2019, and is now embarking on what Elek calls “a far more aggressive rollout plan”, beginning with Devonshire Square.  The online business was a boon during the pandemic, Elek says, but the company prioritised “open and honest conversations” with its landlords and didn’t walk away from any of its venues during lockdown – although Elek says he was relieved that two sites the company had considered for 2020 openings had come to nothing. The business has bounced back since. Lucky Voice does not publish its profit and loss account as part of its Companies House filings, but Elek says EBITDA for the 2021-22 financial year rose by some 57% on the year before. At the time he speaks to EG, he says the business is anticipating “our best Christmas by far, which is a relief because we haven’t really had one since 2019”. Elek wants the company to boast 10 venues by the end of 2024. After Devonshire Square, the next will open in London by the summer, another by Christmas and then three more in 2024. Elek sees “a real potential” in entering new cities, with Manchester holding particular promise. And landlords could find that space they may have struggled to shift to some leisure or retail operators is a hit with Lucky Voice. “Because basement space is good for us, and because we can be off-pitch, there are some interesting sites out there that might not be appealing to others which can work really well for us,” Elek says. I will survive The cost-of-living crisis holds a new challenge for leisure businesses, but early signs are surprisingly positive. “We expected a shift in behaviour at the beginning of this year, and definitely since April,” Elek says. “We are measuring average spend per head very closely, and it has been a pretty amazing six months where our average spend per head has actually gone up.” Elek puts some of the success down to changing attitudes after pandemic-driven restrictions – a period in which people had to book evenings out far in advance and check in at every venue means that people have become more accustomed to spending more time in one location, he posits. And the celebratory nature of a Lucky Voice visit – the chain’s hat-trick of event drivers are birthdays, hen parties and stag-do’s, Elek says – means that demand is consistent. “That’s definitely not saying that we’re not going to get hit,” Elek adds. “I’m sure it will happen, but we have been in a very good position so far.” With a record week only just passed, a bumper Christmas and a new opening around the corner, Elek sees leisure brands such as his as embodying a new vision for town and city centres.  “You have all these different activity-based venues now and retail trying to create more experiences in their shops as well – that’s what people are looking for,” he says. “When I talk about competitors, I don’t mean karaoke competitors, I mean Flight Club, Puttshack, Swingers, Electric Shuffle. These guys are doing really well too. The demand is huge.” To send feedback, e-mail tim.burke@eg.co.uk or tweet @_tim_burke or @EGPropertyNews Photos © Lucky Voice