In today's Daily Business briefing cheesecakes, video games and the nighttime economy are on Miri Thomas and Simon Keegan's news agenda.
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00:00Coming up in today's Daily Business Briefing, Cheesecakes, Video Games and the Nighttime Economy.
00:11Hello, I'm Mary Thomas. And I'm Simon Keegan.
00:14And the story that I saw this morning that was of interest to me is about the Deals News piece, actually, Simon.
00:21It's about Love Cheesecakes. They're based in Lancaster.
00:24Well, I love cheesecake, so tell me more.
00:26They're based in Lancaster and they were featured on Dragon's Den back in 2020.
00:30Now, they've just been acquired by a Bradford-based business.
00:34So, Love Cheesecakes supplies the food service, wholesale and hospitality market.
00:39And they've been bought by Regal Foods. Now, Regal Food Group, based in Bradford, they're super acquisitive as well.
00:45So, they bought Just Desserts Yorkshire in 2022.
00:48And even more recently than that, Love Handmade Cakes.
00:52Mills and Reid advise. So, that's an interesting one.
00:55Interesting to see what they do with their new brand. So, watch out for that one.
00:59Certainly is. What's your go-to cheesecake, Mary?
01:01Oh, I think like a lemon one, potentially.
01:03A lemon one. Nice.
01:04What about you?
01:05It's all about the cheese for me, like a New York cheesecake and like a good solid biscuit base.
01:10Okay.
01:11So, talking of deals, though, one in the Northwest,
01:14Sasha Lord has exited Parklife and the Warehouse Project,
01:18which I think brands fairly synonymous with him going quite a way back.
01:23So, he sold to Live Nation.
01:25And he's going to concentrate on his role as the nighttime economy advisor.
01:31Obviously, he was quite vocal, wasn't he, in lockdown, standing up for the hospitality sector.
01:37And I understand he's also just become a dad as well.
01:41So, that sounds pretty time-consuming as well, I would think.
01:44Yeah, I'm sure. And the other piece I saw, this was from our Birmingham team.
01:50They spotted the financial results for CentreSoft.
01:53Now, CentreSoft are a video games distributor and they distribute all those sort of, you know,
02:00the games that you can play on video consoles and things like that, games consoles.
02:03And they've just announced that their sales have gone up by £90 million in the year ending December 2023.
02:09And their sales are now at around £477 million.
02:13So, I had to look into what they've attributed that growth to.
02:17And it looks like, you know, no surprise, a good handle on costs and overheads and those sort of things.
02:22But it's also relationships with their key partners and retailers, the publishers and the retailers.
02:27But also, I think they benefited from ongoing sales of games consoles in 2023.
02:33So, if sales were strong, more people were buying games.
02:35It sort of raised their fortunes as well.
02:38Yeah, sounds good.
02:39What else are you working on?
02:41Well, I have recently done the first round of our dealmakers judging.
02:46So, what I do is, before we get to the main judging, I got about 30 of the region's top dealmakers.
02:53So, lawyers, accountants, funders, to get some of their views on what kind of a year we've had,
02:59what's been the standout deals, who've been the top dealmakers.
03:03We've already got some amazing entries in, but there is still time to get your entries in.
03:07You've got until the 25th of July.
03:09So, those entries then will go through to my main judging panel.
03:14Other things that we've got in the Northwest, we're doing most exciting workplaces.
03:20Now, this, the deadline for this is today.
03:23So, if you want to, you can email me directly, simon.keegan at newsco.com.
03:28This is any exciting workplace across the Northwest, but it needs to be a recent fitter.
03:35It needs to be in the last year because, obviously, it's an annual thing that we do.
03:39We've also got our first ever ESG champions going in the next issue.
03:45Who are you looking for there?
03:46Well, that can be companies of any size.
03:48It could be, you know, your big international companies, or it could be smaller startups, challengers.
03:56It doesn't have to be on the E side of the ESG.
04:00It doesn't all have to be kind of environmental.
04:02It can be people that's doing good in society as well.
04:05So, it's just individuals or companies?
04:07It's companies.
04:08And so, we're going to profile that.
04:09I think we're going to profile about 30 of these companies.
04:12So, we're looking for suggestions.
04:14Also, in the next issue of the magazine, it's one of the most anticipated features of the year, the rich list.
04:20And I don't think we're going to be in it, are we?
04:23I don't, yeah.
04:24I don't think we can compete with that.
04:25Not this year?
04:26No.
04:27I think we've got something like, there's a few billionaires that top the table there.
04:31There definitely is.
04:32I mean, some of the businesses are typically the owners of things like Home Bargains and B&M and Peel,
04:40some of these big giants that we've got in the Northwest, isn't it?
04:43But we always have a few interesting, unexpected entries in it as well.
04:48So, I'll be interested to see who else cracks the top 10, maybe.
04:53Yeah.
04:54There are some other interesting developments from Insider coming up as well.
04:57So, for all of you who enjoy reading our daily email newsletters, you can now read us on Saturdays and Sundays.
05:05As of this weekend, we will be putting out a new edition, just for the weekend,
05:09where you can access a few longer reads and maybe take things at your leisure.
05:14So, a nice cup of coffee and an Insider newsletter.
05:18And a bit of cheesecake, maybe.
05:19Maybe, maybe.
05:20And then also, you can now submit your news directly to Insider via the Your World portal.
05:26So, there'll be a link to that in the show notes.
05:29If it passes our news team's reviews, we'll then put it on the website and you can then share to your heart's content.
05:37Very good.
05:38So, more from us as well.
05:39Yeah, well, I think that's all we've got time for today.
05:41So, we'll see you Monday.