Barracuda sites seek to become food-led
Speaking at the UK Pub Retail Summit, he noted that draught lager, showing football and machine income were in decline across the sector — so the company needed to move with growing trends.
Strategically, McQuater said sites needed to move towards a food-led business.
To do this, he added that Barracuda had to refresh its skills base, so hired a new head of catering (Kate Eastwood), a new finance director (Simon Vardigans) and a new operations director (Richard Stringer).
McQuater said that the company also repositioned and relaunched the Smith & Jones brand, which is female-friendly and targets the “upper half of the pub market”.
Teaming up with a new design agency, Barracuda launched the new look in 2009 to give the sites a softer, contemporary feel and one that matched the new target audience.
McQuater added that the updated concept is a “seven-day trading model, making money from 9am”.
It has upgraded all its menus, changed suppliers to improve buying terms and margins and introduced Costa Coffee.
Barracuda is also now offering 133 rooms at six of its Smith & Jones pubs, and McQuater said that it has seen a 72% average occupancy and room revenue up 26% year-on-year.
McQuater said: “The lesson we’ve learnt is that if you’re going to have a brand, you must absolutely know the kind of customer that brand is appealing to, you must aim the retail brand at that demographic.
“And where you will definitely go wrong is having the wrong brand in the wrong location for the wrong customer base.”
