Vertigo Lounge café bar to open in Hornchurch

29-Mar-2011 - Last updated on 30-Mar-2011 at 14:48 GMT

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Vertigo Lounge is a cafe by day and a lounge bar by night

A new café bar concept, Vertigo Lounge, is to open in Hornchurch to target over 25 year-olds looking for a more ‘sophisticated’ social venue in the suburban northeast London town.

Brothers Darren and Vernon Eva, co-founders of the venue, plan to make it a premium café during the day and a lounge bar in the evenings.

Design features, such as the lighting, will be used to make the transformation seamless between the day and evening venue, explained Darren Eva.

“We could easily open a venue and be busy for Saturday evening, and there are already several other venues in Hornchurch that are Saturday oriented,” he told BigHospitality.

“We wanted to offer something that would be open for a coffee or a bite to eat during the day, then after about 6pm the coffee machine would disappear and it would be a bar, so that in the evening you don’t feel like being in a day-time venue and vice versa.”

Design

The 3,300sq ft venue, which has been a furniture store for around three decades, covers three floors connected via an open staircase.

Due to open in early June, Vertigo Lounge has taken its name from the open terrace on the second floor, which spans the front three metres at the top of the venue.

Other spaces include a kitchen area and a marble bar on the ground floor, another bar and a central banquette area on the first floor, and an orangery on the top floor.

Soft furnishings and plenty of light are also key features. Design consultants Q&A and ‘four-letter word’ said that the site “plays with the principal of height and allows an element of discovery to the Vertigo mark”.

Search for sophistication

“The intention is to have a high-quality, sophisticated venue for over 25s. The venue caters for 220 people, but our intention is not to rack them and stack them, but to provide a comfortable environment, with good, clear music where you can have a conversation,” said Eva.

The Eva brothers decided to launch the concept as they saw a gap in the Hornchurch market for a venue for drinks before dinner

“If you currently go out into Honchurch centre there are some lovely places to dine, but the opportunities for a few drinks before or after are very limited, particularly aimed at over 25 market.

“We felt there was a real market for that sort of thing.”