Former Pizza Hut UK & Ireland chief operating office Aaron Moore-Saxton has told MCA that Aspirational Pub Company, where he is now managing director, is primed for growth.
Moore-Saxton took on the role in July last year after previously being a non-executive director of the group, which was founded by his former Whitbread colleague, Jason Keen.
Moore-Saxton said he had spent the last eight months putting in place a more robust back office structure across the currently five-strong estate.
He said he had established a training programme for shift managers to establish the general managers of the future with the aim of recreating the culture of development which he believes his generation benefitted from at companies such as Whitbread in the 1990s.
He told MCA:“We are now in a position where growth is fully front and centre of the agenda. The strategic plan is ultimately to build the business so we can have a good mixture of leased and tenanted sites and free-of-tie/freehold sites. We’re also looking to understand how our model is transferable within licensed retail as opposed to just pub retail. If you look at a lot of the success stories over the last few years, while they may well be in our sector, they’re not specifically in pubs. We have a belief that our model is transferable outside of pubs.”
Moore-Saxton said expansion would be dictated by the quality of sites on offer but said he believed the company remained on track for its goal of adding a further outlet by the end of this year and having a 10 to 12-strong estate by 2020.
On target geography, he said: “It has always been in our mandate that we wanted to be the best pub company in Hertfordshire so growth has tended to focus on that area and slightly outside it. Now, I think the most important thing for us is the sites. The consideration of geography comes after we’ve established if a site is right for us. My background running a UK-wide estate has probably helped inform that but working with a company like Charles Wells can also potentially open up possibilities outside of our heartland.”
On training and development, he said: “People of my generation had the benefit of being heavily invested in by the likes of Whitbread and Greenalls and Allied in the 1990s. That level of training and support just isn’t there for the generation coming through now and I think that’s a real miss. So, I have tried to recreate that with a training course for that second tier of management, based on a lot of work that had already been put in by Jason. The difference between those training programmes of old and what you generally see now is that training now tends to focus on functional skills rather than what might be seen as non-tangible development.
“I don’t want development simply to be about those practical skills – I want just as much time spent on personal development and for staff to feel like what they have learnt with us is not just going to help them do that particular role at that particular time of their lives but that it has equipped them with skills they can take through life. I genuinely believe that is a responsibility as an employer.
“From the company’s point of view it’s also about making sure we have the general managers of the future ready and prepared to step up. Too often people in this industry are promoted too early because there is no one else to fill a role and then find themselves learning how to do their job while they’re already doing it.”
