Tavistock Leisure managing director Mark Hird has told M&C Report he is close to making a disposal which will allow him to kick start a rollout of the company’s brewtap concept, with plans to grow from three to 12 by 2019.
The North East based company operates nine sites in total, including three hotels and Hird said the past 12 months had been dominated by a refresh of the Best Western Roker in Sunderland.
The work, which finished last month, included converting unused restaurant space into a tearoom called Let There Be Crumbs and repositioning the hotel’s Italian restaurant.
The large public bar has also been re-launched, as Poetic License Distillery Bar.
Hird said: “The bar will be one of the only with the distillery in view at back of bar where we will be launching Poetic Licence Distillery in the next month to six weeks where we will be producing two different gins and one vodka.”
He added: “Now that we have got Roker to where we want it to be the focus is getting back on track with the brew pub and restaurants and getting them up from three to 12 in the next four years.
“I’m waiting to negotiate on the sale of one of our sites and that will give me a bit of a hunting fund to buy more sites.”
Hird said the company would stick to its heartland of the north east for the search.
He said the micro-brewery, Sonnet43, was also running at maximum capacity at its current base so bigger premises would be needed.
He said: “The easy option would be to move to a factory unit but we’re not really factory guys, we like to have a bit more quirkiness to us.
“We’re talking with Durham Council about a couple of sites they have.”
He said he was looking at contracting out some brewing to boost capacity beyond the current 50 barrels a week.
On trading so far in 2015, he said: “It’s been very good. We’ve had a strong start to the year and been above budget.”
