Punch grows Village Pub & Kitchen estate
The latest pub to open under Punch’s most food-led offer was the Woolpack in Yeadon, west Yorkshire.
The other sites within the portfolio stretch across Lincolnshire, Staffordshire, East Anglia and Surrey.
Considering rollout potential
Punch’s development director David Wigham told MCA that the initial sites had performed ahead of expectation and on average were showing a 50/50 wet/dry split.
He said the next stage was to consider the ultimate rollout potential but indicated that the early assessment of it eventually growing to triple figures had not changed.
Wigham told MCA: “We launched the pilot sites back in September and we were pleased with how quickly people got on board with the concept. We’ve now got a nice geographic spread so we can see that it’s working in different places."
Thinking about the pipeline
He added: “We have a lot of village pubs in our estate that could fit this model so now we have to think about what our pipeline will look like.
“We have made a few tweaks to the menu and we are about to go into our first full menu refresh.”
Heineken, which has tabled a joint bid with Patron Capital to acquire Punch, has said it is keen to review the potential of the pubcos various trading formats.
