The Draft House, the London-based craft beer concept led by Charlie McVeigh, will open a second site in the City this spring, M&C has learnt.
McVeigh also told M&C he was in “advanced talks” on the company’s first pub outside London and long-term would be targeting the commuter belt around London.
The group has secured the lease of the former Bertorelli site on the corner of Fetter Lane and Plough Place, which is expected to open in April as Draft House Fetter.
McVeigh said planning permission had been secured to create a new entrance from the 6,700 sq ft site onto the redeveloped Plough Place.
McVeigh said: “Our first City site, in Seething Lane has absolutely flown and on Thursdays and Fridays we could easily fill double the space. The City clearly likes the Draft House, so we wanted to give them another one.
“This will be the biggest we have done and will have a rally good sized dining area so we anticipate it will be quite food led.”
Work on the site will begin next week at the same time as the group’s unit in the Bower development in Old Street. McVeigh said the latter would have a longer build time and so was likely to open in the summer.”
On further growth, he said: “We hope we will have our first site outside of London coming on stream in the summer. We’re at a pretty advanced stage with the legals on that.
“We think we will do one more site on top of those this calendar year and there are various opportunities in the pipeline – mainly out of London.
“Our strategy is to look at orbital London towns – places like Woking, Reading, Milton Keynes, Croydon. The idea is that we can be a local hero rather than competing with a lot of our colleagues in places like Leeds, Manchester and Brighton.”
He added; “We completed a fundraising for £1.1m at the end of October. The relationship with HSBC has been fantastic and they are supporting us with capex so that sets us up to really start rolling out the brand.”
Marc Rogers at MKR Property acted on the Bertorelli deal.
