At Inventive Leisure’s Annual General Meeting today, chair John Green said that market conditions are more stable than the group has seen for some time and that overall turnover for the first 22 weeks of the financial year was up by 12 per cent.

In the same period, like for like sales rose to 1.6 per cent while The Vodka Kitchen, the group’s new food initiative, has seen a year on year sales lift of 48 per cent.

The total proportion of turnover derived from food sales has grown to 5 per cent, from 3.8 per cent in the previous year.

Contracts have been exchanged on a new, 5,500sq ft (511sq m) site in Manchester city centre that will be converted into a Revolution bar format by spring 2005.

Two further developments – in Leeds and Cardiff – are also due to open next year while the group continues to look for new sites for development in its target towns and cities.

Green said: “The market conditions in the financial year to date appear to have stabilised and we have seen a modest abatement in the deep price discounting in recent weeks. The board is optimistic for the future.”

Inventive currently operates 42 sites, 37 of which trade as Revolution bars.