UK-based café, bar and restaurant operator Loungers has announced the opening of its 200th venue, Verdetto Lounge, in Buckingham.

The new outlet will offer its guests all-day food and drinks.

Loungers co-founder and chairman Alex Reilley stated: “We are hugely proud of the positive impact that our sites have had on local communities right across the UK since opening the first Lounge 21 years ago.

“We are determined to continue playing a major role in breathing new life into high streets as well as creating and sustaining much-needed local employment. Time and time again, we’ve seen that the opening of a Lounge has a really positive knock-on effect on the businesses around it and, of course, on the local employment market.

“Last year alone, we created around 1,000 new jobs through new site openings and are on course to comfortably exceed that figure in the current year.”

Loungers, which operates restaurants and bars under the Lounge, Cosy Club and Brightside brands, said that each new Lounge opening results in an investment of nearly £1m and has the potential to create up to 30 new jobs on average.

The operator aims to open 34 new sites across the country in the 2023-24 financial year alone.

With the opening of its 200th location, Loungers' total estate size has now increased to 238.

Reilley added: “To be opening our 200th Lounge is a fantastic landmark, but there is lots more for us to go for. We firmly believe that there is scope to have at least three times that number of Lounges in the longer term, and we are more ambitious than ever before about our plans for the future.”