A new lease agreement from Punch Taverns – unveiled this morning – offers free-of-tie prices to lessees and scraps five-year rent reviews.
The move, which is designed to attract a more entrepreneurial type of lessee, will make available discounts of up to £160 per barrel in exchange for a higher fixed rent.
The new agreement will also allow lessees to go free-of-tie on local ales made by smaller brewers – those that fall under the current progressive beer duty limit (36,662 barrels per year or less). Punch said it was still determining the exact details for this part of the agreement – chiefly whether lessees would be able to stock multiple local beers or just one.
Under the discount scheme, lessees will also be incentivised to outperform the agreed fair maintainable trade (FMT) thresholds, with bigger beer discounts triggered once annual barrelage targets have been met. Punch’s pub partners can opt to sign up to three different levels of fixed rent with corresponding levels of beer discount – set at £65 per barrel, £120 per barrel and £160 per barrel.
The lease will be introduced into one of Punch’s four regions in September in what will be a far-reaching trial of the new agreement – it expects up to 150 partners to sign up. If enough lessees sign up to the new deal, the company expects to expand the agreement to the entire business in early next year.
Although the agreements, which run across a 10-year period, with a further 10 years available, scrap the controversial five-year rent review, they do include inflation-linked annual increases – linked to the Retail Price Index measure.
The new agreements fall under what Punch has dubbed the Punch Buying Club, which will also make available to purchase an extensive list of non-tied products
The deals tie lessees for lagers, ciders, ale and machines.
