Shepherd Neame plans "significant" investment in its pubs

George Barnes, Shepherd Neame’s property and tenanted trade director, said that investments would be a combination of “sparkles”, which will have investments of up to £50,000, and larger “transformational” spends of up to £150,000.

“I hope this financial year we would do something in the order of 20 to 25 developments of pubs, a mixture of transformational and sparkle,” said Barnes.

He said that in some areas there’s a “clear mismatch”, where pubs are “operating as a fairly basic boozer in an affluent area”.

Barnes added: “The overall strategy remains as it has been for a number of years. Continue to develop at the top very high-quality houses, while selling those at the bottom end that are less viable for licensees or ourselves.”

Greg Wallis, Shepherd Neame’s tenanted operations manager, outlined some new measures for tenants across its circa 300-strong tenanted arm.

The company would be looking at plans to offer tenants a bulk-buy package deal on utilities to reduce costs; Shepherd Neame already offers a brokerage package. The company said utilities are currently the fourth highest overhead for tenants, and while its managed pubs pay on average 8.5p per unit of energy, for the tenanted estate the figure is 13p.

Shepherd Neame is looking to introduce more purchasing deals to help tenants reduce the costs of basic supplies. And it aims to roll out an induction plan process for tenants in the second half of the 2012 financial year.