Sir Tim Martin is standing with a bucket of coffee in his hand, surveying his new, unopened pub beneath one of the capital’s busiest train stations. “If you open in London Bridge having spent £3 million, and there’s a huge big rent as well, and you don’t attract everyone, you’re in real trouble,” he chuckles.
Judging from what happens next, the glass-half-full founder and chairman of Wetherspoon’s doesn’t have much to fear. Almost as those words leave his mouth, the door from the street swings open, left unlocked solely for the benefit of the interview. Two labourers in their mid-twenties walk in — “this place is brand spankers!” — before eventually realising that the light fittings are still empty and the bar taps, crucially, aren’t yet hooked up to anything drinkable. Told the bar is closed, they take instructions from an avuncular Martin to head to The Pommelers Rest, another of his pubs a quarter of a mile away, where you can still get a pint of real ale for shy of £3.
In the modern business landscape where CEOs are surrounded by sharply dressed media managers, Martin is a relief. His pink polo shirt has seen better days and the coffee, after a week of visiting pubs in the northeast, is sorely needed. At more than six foot with an unruly mane of white hair — and some high-profile publicity thanks to political interventions on Brexit (pro) and lockdown (anti) — he is widely recognised across the company’s 800 pubs and 50 hotels.
As we walk around the site of this new London Bridge pub, in what used to be the London Dungeon before it relocated to near the London Eye, he insists on introducing himself by name to every member of the construction crew he meets. With profit last year at £74 million on sales of more than £2 billion, he is running what is inarguably one of Britain’s most successful businesses with a mobile phone from a decade-old Volvo, which he lovingly calls “the Airwolf”. Does he get enough credit?
Martin dodges the question. “I think the problem is that if you look at Next, which started roughly the same time as Wetherspoon, it’s just been far more successful. Simon Wolfson,” he laughs — Martin punctuates every other sentence with a laugh somewhere between a hoot and a peal — “damn him, Simon Wolfson has just been much more successful.”
But while he brushes off the praise, he does remember one notable slight. A well-known business journalist “rubbed me up the wrong way about 20 years ago when we opened for breakfasts. He said, who’s going to go to a pub smelling of urine and stale beer for breakfast?’ I’m sure he’s a nice man. I’ve forgiven him.”
Since opening up for morning service, Wetherspoon has become one of the nation’s top five breakfast providers, narrowly overtaking Starbucks. But for all the success, it is clear that he and his industry have been fighting an uphill battle, particularly over the past decade. Since the pandemic in particular he says his industry has not had a “following wind”.
The Sunday Times. To read the full interview click here
