Pure to enter CVA

Healthy to-go brand Pure is set to enter a company voluntary arrangement (CVA), the Times reports.

The 22-strong brand is pursuing the option in a bid to link leases to turnover, with sales at 30% of pre-covid levels.

“We didn’t want to do it but we are staring down the barrel of six more months of depressed sales,” co-founder Spencer Craig has said.

Before temporarily closing its entire estate in response the pandemic in March, the brand had lined up its first airport site – in Gatwick’s North Terminal – as it looked to expand in the travel hub sector at the beginning of this year.

Since then, Craig joined calls for landlords to offer rent-free periods during the pandemic, on the premise that the alternative would be a raft of administrations, CVAs and empty units.

“If the landlords don’t cancel the rents for this quarter, they will have massive voids, CVAs, administrations,” he told MCA in April. “The only way for most businesses to survive is a cancellation of the rent. Deferring it doesn’t work. No one is open, there’re no sales.”

He continued: “A lot of our shops are in office developments. The battle after this is, will working from home become the new norm? How do you attract people to your office developments?

“Having empty shops and no food won’t help. My business and others in hospitality are part of the solution to keep these office developments attractive.”