Laurel to unveil 'new look' Hogshead

Laurel Pub Company will unveil its revamped Hogshead brand across four sites next month.

If successful, the company will convert the rest of the 100-strong chain to the updated look.

Speculation has surrounded the brand since Laurel was formed in May last year.

Since inheriting the chain of high street bars, Laurel has removed 60 pubs from the Hogshead chain.

The brand was originally cask ale-focused but many of the more traditional houses have been converted to stand-alone managed pubs.

"We had a whole raft of bars from traditional to the achingly contemporary." said chief executive Ian Payne. "Cask Ale's Are Us is not where we want the brand to go,"

Mr Payne said the chain would support cask ale but had imposed a minimum sales target of two containers a week for any given brand.

He said the remaining 100 Hogshead units are appropriate for the brand as the company takes it forward.

While the Laurel boss remained tight-lipped on the new Hogshead bars, he said the look would be "dramatically different".

Two of the four units used as test sites will be in London, with the others probably in Sheffield and Walsall.

Laurel will also look for new sites should the transformation prove successful.

The 600-strong managed business is preparing for flotation, possibly within 12 months.

It has moved to strengthen its board with the appointments of John Lovering and Mary Curnock Cook, and plans to dramatically increase its size before listing on the stock market.

"We want to buy at least another 200 pubs," said chief executive Ian Payne. "We'd like to be in a position to do an IPO in about a year's time, but our advisors say we are not big enough at the moment."

The Laurel business was borne out of the Whitbread estate last year, when Morgan Grenfell Private Equity bought 3,000 pubs for £1.62bn.

Laurel has since sold 2,300 tenanted houses to Enterprise Inns in two tranches generating £1.135bn, leaving the business with 600 managed pubs and bars.

The company has disposed of 10 Dome sites it inherited as part of the Whitbread deal.

The remaining four have been taken on by the Style in the City group that operates a clutch of vodka bars including the Babushka brand, through a management and profit-share agreement.

A question mark remains over the under-performing Casa brand. The Croydon Casa, in Surrey, will also be converted to a Babushka.

It is thought Laurel may pursue further management deals with niche retailers.