Southern Counties Taverns, the southern England-based pub operator, has opened its 14th site and Enterprise Inns’ first Beacon managed tenancy on the south coast.
Southern Counties, which is led by managing director Bert Johnson, has taken the Brass Monkey in Shirley, Southampton under the Beacon concept, which sees Enterprise set drinks prices that guarantee a certain gross profit and have some say over the retail offer.
Enterprise Inns commercial director Ed Cottrell said a handful of pubs under the Beacon concept, which was initially trialled at 90 pubs in northern England, operate in the south west but the Brass Monkey was the first on the south coast.
Enterprise expects to have c.250 sites operating on the Beacon managed tenancy scheme by the end of the financial year. Cottrell said: “We’ve got a rollout programme that isn’t necessarily regionally based. There will be a few more [in the south] but it will be in single figures.”
