Sebastian Lyall is arguably among the hospitality industry’s most creative brains, launching Lollipop in 2015, which has seen experiences created in bar, restaurant and escape room settings, including award-winning WW2 inspired bar, The Bletchley, where customers crack codes to devise their own cocktails and which is the group’s most profitable site.
He is an operator not afraid of turning traditional bar operating processes and experiences on their head and breaking boundaries, with creative and sometimes controversial pop-ups also including naked restaurant The Bunyadi (which he hopes to bring back as a permanent site) and a pop-up owl café.
Lollipop, which has grown this far without any external investment, was going from strength to strength before the COVID-19 lockdown, operating four different concepts, including two funhouses in Hackney and Chelsea which both house three different venues, an ABQ bar in Paris and The Grid escape room in Southwark.
Group sales have flourished from 500k in 2015/16 to a predicted £3m in 2020 (pre-COVID-19 crisis estimate), through a business model which rests on higher margins and high spend per head, with average 30% site EBITDA from sites.