Tavistock Hospitality, the Sunderland-based bar, restaurant and hotel operator, is to double the size of its Sonnet 43 brewpub and restaurant estate with four openings in the next four months.
Managing director Mark Hird told M&C that the sale of the Grand Hotel in Hartlepool last year had funded the acquisitions, which take the total estate to 12.
He said the end of 2015 had also seen the launch of the Poetic Licence gin distillery and that the company planned to roll out supply nationwide this year, with an initial focus on London and the north east.
The first pub to open in the current pipeline will be the Three Horse Shoes in Sunderland. Hird said his team was on site for the second re-opening of the pub in a year. The former Vaux Brewery was taken on last year by a multiple operator who decided to sell to Tavistock in November.
Hird said: “We have done a lot of work – there were some fundamental flaws with the design of the pub, such as the kitchen being too small and in the wrong place. We have given it a change of style and offer and we’re looking forward to opening on Friday.”
The pub will continue the focus on accommodation for Tavistock, with seven bedrooms being added initially and a planning application to submitted for a further 20.
Hird said the pub’s location next to the Nissan factory was likely to help drive trade.
The next site, due to open at the end of February, is the Toronto Lounge in Bishops Auckland. Hird said he anticipated drawing trade from the UK’s first live re-enactment museum, due to open nearby in the summer. The site will have nine bedrooms.
Due to open in the Spring are the White Lion in Brampton, Carlisle and the Plough in Mountsett, Newcastle. The former will house a pub and the group’s Italian Farmhouse Restaurants and Café concept with 14 letting rooms. Tavistock has been running the latter under a lease arrangement but purchased the freehold in the last quarter of last year.
Hird said: “The plan is still to get the brewpub/restaurants to 12. This year we will concentrate on getting those four up and trading profitably, then in 2017 we’ll continue aim to reach that goal.”
On the distillery, Hird said: “We launched at the Boutique Bar Show in London and then won awards for both our gins at the Craft Distilling Expo.
“We are setting up the distribution network and then we will roll it out but with the main focus in our homeland of the north east and on London.
“It’s a crafty, hand finished bottle. We can only turn out 3,500 bottles a month at the moment. Towards the end of this year we will assess how the penetration has been in London. Once we are established in the UK we will probably look at some export markets as well.”
