Cirrus buys Marco Pierre White pub Yew Tree Inn
The Yew Tree Inn in Berkshire had been the cause of a dispute between Pierre White and his former business partners. The pub, which features eight letting rooms and turned over £1.2m last year, was put up for sale through Davis Coffer Lyons earlier this year, with offers sought in excess of £1.65m.
Cirrus Inns was co-founded by 333 Holdings founder Alex Langlands Pearse (Langy) and Mark Askew, former executive head chef at Gordon Ramsay Holding, has also secured the Dundas Arms near Newbury; the Old House in Copthorne, West Sussex; the Museum in Blandford, Dorset; and the Archangel in Frome, Somerset. Its flagship is the Admiral Codrington in London’s Chelsea.
It is thought that the group, which is aiming to eventually invest in up to 50 pubs, has already built up a database of “talented” entrepreneurs who wish to operate one of its investment sites.
The group is focused on operating iconic rural properties which operate individually and are very much part of the local community. Typically, a site will be a pub with a restaurant and around eight bedrooms, with Cirrus the finance and the operational vehicle that finds the sites and the right people to run them with its support.
The new venture features Polly Dyson, formerly of Geronimo Inns as finance director; Ella de Beer, formerly operations manager at the Meredith Group, as operations director; and Jean Taylor, who was previously a regional estates executive at Punch Taverns, as property director.
