Peach on the piste
Lucy Britner reports on Peach Pub Company's new international adventure
It's enjoying success with its seven UK pubs, but now Peach Pub Company is looking to make things peachy overseas. The company plans to open a boutique ski hotel and restaurant in Morzine, Port du Soleil, France.
The innovative pub company plans to invest £2.5m in a clubhouse hotel and restaurant
concept in the French town.
Peach aims ultimately to have two to three international ventures - hopefully one in a hot country.
The project, code-named White Peach, is the brainchild of Corin Earland, head chef at Peach pub the Fishes, in North Hinksey, Oxfordshire, who has worked for the company for six years.
He says: "My girlfriend is Danish and we are both keen skiers. It has always been our plan
to work and live together in France and
Peach's joint-venture partner scheme has made this possible."
This innovative scheme offers managers and chefs running Peach pubs the chance to own a stakehold in the business. A separate joint venture company is created for each partner, designed around the kind of business they want to run, with the shareholding dependent on the amount of cash they have to invest.
Corin has invested £75,000 in the project - from his long-term bonus scheme with Peach. That gives him 10% of his pub's profit year on year. Other investors include a property developer and a chartered surveyor.
The hotel will feature two luxury apartments on the top floor and eight bedrooms on the middle two floors.
"It will work a bit like a private members' hotel," says Corin. "Marketing will be targeted at Peach's 35,000-strong database of customers as well as offering corporate weekends, much like the ones we go on with Peach."
Peach runs annual corporate thank-you trips for staff to places such as Spain and Cornwall.
There are plans for a boys' play room, with pool table and Nintendo Wii in the basement, as well as spa treatments.
"The restaurant will be a bit different from what's on offer in the rest of the town,"
explains Corin. "We're not planning fondue. The menu will include big stews and spit-roast chicken on an open fire.
"We want the food to be so good that our guests don't want to leave - and we also want outsiders to come in just to eat."
Summer in Morzine is a Mecca for mountain bikers and Corin says there is nothing above three stars, hotel-wise, in the town.
The freehold hotel is currently owned by 12 family members and Peach has paid E1.4m for the building.
Corin and his girlfriend, Liff Schaumann Kjaer, will ideally live on site, though this is yet to be confirmed, and the whole project is set to go live in the summer of 2009.
"The biggest challenge will be bookings," says Corin. "We're also busy learning French."
But at least Corin won't have to worry about staff - the chefs and front-of-house teams at Peach are queuing round the block for a slice
of White Peach.
Peach's pubs include sites in Warwick; Strat-
ford-upon-Avon; Salford, Buckinghamshire; and Berkhamsted, Hertfordshire.
