Fuller's enjoys two bumper Christmases
Emeny said he expected 2015, the brewer and pub operator’s 170th year of trading, to continue that success. The company has recently acquired two new sites and will open the Blue Boat in Fulham in April.
Fuller’s will also open five new sites under The Stable banner – the craft beer and pizza concept – as well as a new build in Greenwich.
Emeny said recent openings had performed even better than expected.
He said: “We began the year opening at Heathrow Terminal 2, which has performed very well for us. The Admirality, which opened in late October has got off to a fantastic start as has One Over The Ait in Kew Bridge.
'Pleasing'
“The way the company is growing we would have expected a record Christmas because we have had some incredibly successful new openings. What’s really pleasing for us this Christmas is that we did really well in December last year and putting the two periods together we were up something like 15% like-for-like over the two years. The most pleasing thing for me is that we are consistently outperforming the market rather than having one good period.”
He said that the success of the Heathrow site had been “an evolution of what we have been doing at transport hubs for the past few years”.
He said: “The most high profile of those transport hubs is the Parcel Yard at King’s Cross. What we have learnt from those is the enormous demand for Fuller’s beers in those pubs. At Heathrow we have Black Cab stout as our stout and Vintage Ale sells particularly well. I think it really helps the brewery that this growing move towards new products is being embraced by customers. The Parcel Yard is our biggest site for Frontier sites in the whole company. So we’re learning a lot from those sites that we look to do elsewhere.”
Premium
Emeny said the company had continued to outperform the London market by a focus on premium products as well as the dedication of staff.
He said: “We are a premium estate and we have been seeing for some time customers gravitating towards high quality fresh food and premium brands. The challenge there is to continually find new premium brands that they find exciting and interesting. That’s one of the great advantages of having a brewery in the business because we can work very closely to make sure there always exciting brands coming through.”
Fuller’s reported like-for-like sales up 6.8% for 43 weeks to 24 January in managed pubs and hotels and 4% in tenanted with beer and cider volumes up 4%.
