This week’s exclusive Diary includes board movement at Barracuda; pay packets at Marston’s; early Xmas presents at Innventure; and Woolworths picking up pubs.
Something in the water
Interesting times at Barracuda Group, the pub operator led by Mark McQuater, which is currently looking for new investment or a new owner, with a number of private equity groups believed to be running the rule over the c.200-strong managed business. Diary hears that two directors, Adam Eifion-Jones and Mark Wilton have stepped down from the group. Both Eifion-Jones and Wilton are from Babson Capital, the sizeable debt specialist with more than £6bn of assets under management, which assumed a position in Barracuda in 2009 as part of the group’s restructuring that saw debt reduced by £84m to £163m. The timing of the departures is interesting with the group’s debt position sure to be a key point in any negotiations with suitors. All should be revealed next year.
Good job
With many analysts and sector commentators backing Marston’s new building and retail agreement strategy, it is good to see that the leading players at the brewer and pub operator have been rewarded for their efforts. The group’s annual report shows that chief executive Ralph Findlay has been awarded a 3.2% pay rise to £480,000, while chief financial officer Andrew Andrea has picked up a 5.3% increase in his pay packet to £300,000. However, it is chief operating officer Alistair Darby, seen by many as the “brains” behind the retail agreement scheme, that has received the highest pay rise, up 9.1% to £300,000. The group says: “The salary of COO has been increased to reflect the additional responsibilities and the increased contribution expected from this role and to maintain its competitiveness to similar roles elsewhere.” The may also keep the highly-thought-of Darby out of the reach of many of the group’s rivals.
Salt of the earth
Enterprise Inns has already trialled its “managed tenancy” Project Beacon scheme at 90 sites, which is set to be extended to 300 in the coming year. Talking to analysts last month, the group said that it would look to go further down this road with the development of trading concepts with a greater focus on food, which would be “more in the style of a franchise”. A design template called “Salt + Earth” was used as an example, but it now transpires that this working title may well be the very name given to pubs trialling this agreement. Diary hears that the company has trademarked the name and the first sites to trial the new concept are expected to come online early next year.
Festive fillip
Everybody thought that the comparables, against the snow-gripped three weeks of December last year, would make for more some plump like-for-like progress this month. One piece of early positive news comes from Chris Gerard’s Innventure estate of five pubs. Gerard, who was the brains behind the growth of Vintage Inns during his previous career at Mitchells & Butlers, reports the company’s best ever week last week with total sales of £182,000, up 13% in like-for-like terms on the previous best ever week - the same week the year before. Better news still for industry-watchers is that trade was strong at all of Innventure’s pubs, rural and town-based. The Foresters, Church Crookham, Hampshire, chalked up £27,000 of sales. Its Wellington venue, in Welwyn, Herfordshire hit £40,000. And proving there’s life aplenty in the carvery format, the Broadway in Letchworth town centre has staff with exceptionally sore feet after turnover for the week of an incredible £62,000. Looks like folk are determined to enjoy this festive season.
A design for a pub
Not everyone it seems is happy with the continuing evolution of the British pub. Take James Dean Bradfield, lead singer of the Manic Street Preachers, on his love for the Vulcan in Cardiff, which has appeared in new publication: The Search for the Perfect Pub. He said: “I think what gets lost so often is simplicity. Somewhere like the Vulcan, there really isn’t that much to do. You either drink or you play darts or you talk and that’s enough. You don’t need a DJ everywhere or an open kitchen where some miserable chef who thinks he’s Gordon Ramsay is barking orders at people. I hate the fact that people come to places and say, ‘This place must change!’ Why? Why does it have to conform to everywhere else? Why does everywhere have to be hauled into the modern era in the name of progress?” It’s a thought!
Budget burgers
Diary was wondering the other day about what became of Burger King’s first ever drive-thru in the UK, which closed at the end of 2010. The restaurant opened on 14 October 1986, at the bottom of Sutton high street, but has been unused since Burger King left the site on 31 December last year. The answer on its future came this week, when Sutton Council planners gave go-for the site to become a 100-bed Travelodge.
Woolies pub ‘n’ mix
While mentioning the name Woolworths in the UK brings back the memory of pick ‘n’ mixes and the now defunct high street chain, in Australia it is still regarded as a retailing behemoth. Diary hears the “giant” has tightened its grip on the pubs market by finalising a deal, believed to be worth $50m, to acquire 31 pubs. The deal more than doubles the number of pubs currently under Woolworths' control from 27 to 58. It also cements its position as the country's biggest owner-operator of poker machines, lifting the number of machines under its control to 13,480.
