Growth fund backs Boost with £2.5m

MANCHESTER-based juice bar chain Boost has attracted a £2.5m investment from the Business Growth Fund.

The fund has taken a minority stake in the business which plans to use the cash for further growth.

Boost is an Australian concept which launched in the UK six years ago when Richard and Dawn O’Sullivan, the team behind Millies Cookies, acquired the UK and Ireland rights.

They now have 10 outlets across the UK including Manchester’s Trafford Centre and Piccadilly train station, and Meadowhall Sheffield. The business has sales of around £4m.
 
The Business Growth Fund was launched last year backed by £2.5bn from major banks. Its investment will help Boost accelerate its roll-out programme, with the aim of a further 30 outlets over the next three years. The fund’s regional director Andy Gregory will also join the board.

He said: “From the outset we recognised that this is a company with a fantastic product range, supported by a strong and dynamic brand.

“Richard, Dawn and the rest of the management team are highly experienced in this sector and you only need to look at the success they had previously in executing a very similar rollout with Millie’s Cookies, taking it from an initial few sites to over 100 locations to understand our confidence in them.”

Mr O’Sullivan said: “Having achieved our target number of test stores along with our move into healthy profitability over the last year, we are now well positioned to expand the business to a further 30 locations over the next few years. Having financed the business almost entirely from our own funds to this point, we decided to seek some outside growth capital to service the next phase of this expansion.”

Mr O’Sullivan is also a non-executive director at Barburrito, a Manchester-based food chain that has also attracted Business Growth Fund backing. He sold Millies Cookies to Compass Group in 2003 for £24m.

The Business Growth Fund was launched as part of wider efforts to improve lending to business. The organisation provides capital of between £2m and £10m in profitable businesses with turnovers of between £5m and £100m in return for minority stakes in businesses of between 10% and 40%.

The Boost team was advised by Eversheds, while Baker Tilly and DWF acted for the Business Growth Fund.

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