Regent finds third brand in Stone House

Regent Inns is to press ahead with the roll-out of a third brand called Stone House.

It will open four sites this year and run the brand alongside some of its Jongleurs comedy clubs.

The previous incarnation of Stone House was Pals and the company still has two outlets, in Croydon and Ipswich, trading under the Pals name.

"Stone House has been coming along quietly," said chief executive Stephen Haupt. "We are developing it so that by next year we will have a clear third brand." "Chameleon was the word a few years ago, less so now, but it has good day time trade and genuinely cranks up into the night time, it's fresh food, female friendly and town centre."

The news came as Regent Inns unveiled full-year results. egent said like-for-like sales for the year were down by 6.7 per cent in Walkabout and by 7.7 per cent in Jongleurs.

Some of this was a result of resisting the temptation of heavy discounting as the company did "not believe such actions would benefit either our brands or our market sector in the long term", it said.

Last year the company decided to focus entirely on its branded portfolio and disposed of its "discrete" estate.

But Regent is currently selling 17 unbranded sites that it had previously agreed to sell to Porter Black, before the company collapsed into receivership.

Sales from continuing operations rose to £110.8m with profits from continuing operations up 19.4 per cent to £20m. Exceptional losses, connected with "reorganisation costs" were £8.9m.