Greene King said that the continued success in Retail was driven by seven key factors
The consistent delivery of excellent value, service and quality: Examples of value initiatives included its ‘Two for £3.99’ offer for over 60’s in Meet & Eat and our new weekly offers in Hungry Horse such as ‘Clucking Monday’ and ‘Rib Tickling Wednesday’. On service, Hungry Horse won a national award at the Annual Customer Experience Awards and the number of colleague commendations from customers rose 18%. On quality, we introduced a28 day aged Black Angus steak in Flame Grill and we significantly improved the quality of its salads, across the business, by including new items such as edamame beans and pomegranate seeds.
Broadening its appeal through growth categories such as food, rooms and hot beverages: Total food sales grew 10.4%, with side orders and desserts growing 18% and 16% respectively. It launched a weekend breakfast offer across part of the Hungry Horse estate, widened its range of sharing platters and introduced ‘Stoups’, which are a cross between a soup and a stew and served with grilled flatbread. Revenue per available roomacross Retail rose 5.3% as a result of its ongoing room investment programme in OEI, while it introduced unlimited Big Bean coffee with breakfast in Hungry Horse and Joe’s Tea into its premium local pubs.
Understanding important consumer trends such as convenience, customisation and health: Its Local Pubs lunchtime ‘deli deal’ accounts for 19% of covers in ‘Mainstream High Street’ sites. The new Flame Grill menu has eleven different meat and fish grilling options, while it introduced ‘flip your chips’ in Hungry Horse, so that customers can choose ahealthy option such as salads or jacket potatoes, instead of chips.
Continued investment in our core estate: The company invested £25.4m in its core estate, up 4% on last year. Based on their first half performance, these developments are achieving an annualised return on investment (ROI) of 34.0% with the efficacy of our investments improved by clear branding and segmentation across the retail estate.
Targeted acquisitions: It spent £9.6m acquiring new sites and invested an additional £24.1m into these, previously acquired sites and transfers from Pub Partners. It acquired seven sites and opened four newly-built sites during the period, in Sheffield, Wallsend, Bristol and Braintree. Immediately after the period-end, it opened its first new-build site in Scotland. Sites added since it began its retail expansion strategy have delivered an average site EBITDA ROI of 15.0%.
Employing the best trained and most motivated people in the sector: Either ‘in learning’ or ‘achieved’, the company has seen 3,400 colleagues go on an apprenticeship programme since February 2011, with 2,000 qualifying and an ongoing retention rate of 75%. It said that its progress has been recognised through winning the Eastern Region Macro Employer award, becoming a Top 100 Apprenticeship Employer and coming runner-up in the national competition at the National Apprenticeship awards.
Expanding our digital platform: Visits to its websites grew 22% to 3.9m with almost half now from mobile platforms. Our online sales and reservations were up 13% and 17% respectively, while our facebook followers rose 76% to 298,000. Finally, we launched a gift card offer across its estate for the first time, ahead of Christmas, and initial sales have been very encouraging.
