Chickpea managing director Ethan Davids told delegates his nine-strong business is opening a new site in July, another deal lined up for completion in September and is looking to get into the pub-accommodation market.
Davids told host Ed Bedington, plus fellow panellists Blind Tiger Inns CEO Chris Tulloch and Punch Pubs group property director Stephen Allen: “We love growing and our central team is just totally and utterly motivated by growth. We’re looking at doing two or three new Chickpea sites a year.
“We’ve got a pub in Dorset that’s got nine letting rooms that will open on 28 July and then we hope to complete on another on 1 September, which we hope to open in time for Christmas.
“Beyond that, I’m not quite sure at the moment, but we are getting presented with a nice amount of opportunities and it’s quite a good time to negotiate for your new site so we can keep going until we run out of money!”
On the future for Blind Tiger Inns, Tulloch joked at the event at Rooftop Social Club in Chester: “We’re definitely stopping at 20 sites, but we’re opening our 23rd next week!
“If there’s a good opportunity, we’re not going to push to do it just for the sake of it. We’ve never chased numbers and we never will because there’s no point.
“We’d rather have 10 profitable sites than 30 costing us.”
The trio spoke about the types of property they would be looking for in the name of expansion, at the event that took place on Thursday 19 June 2025.
Davids said: “Alongside Chickpea Group, we’ve also got a smaller group with five wet-led sites and these are tenancies with Stonegate.
“These have helped us grow the Chickpea side of the business – because they perform really well and are not very capital intensive – and now our focus is pubs with rooms on the A303 (between Basingstoke in Hampshire, and Honiton, Devon), which is a bit of a magnet for us.
“We look for two things. We want to be able to get to the A303 within 25 minutes and we want to make sure any site is within 25 minutes of an existing site so even though at times we’re stretched, we’ve got support from other existing sites available.
“The challenge with pubs with rooms is that everyone wants them.”
Pushed into different venues
Tulloch explained: “Everything we do is 100% wet-led so we like busy town centre, city centre, high volume stuff. We’re good at getting a lot of beer sold quickly.
“It’s more challenging now because a lot of the pubcos have now ‘invented’ the model we’ve been doing for 20 years! The pipeline is slowing down somewhat with the operator agreements from the big pubcos.
“It’s good though because it’s pushed us into different venues and using private landlords and things we didn’t do so much before.”
Allen said: “The killer question I always ask the team is ‘why are we a good owner of this pub? Why should we be the best people to own it?’
“We’re really good at community wet pubs. We’ve got literally hundreds of them. What we need to not do is buy all the shiny things that might be great and steer away from expensive places.
“We like community pubs that we think will be here in 10-plus years. I’m not buying it for today, tomorrow, or even next year.”
Of course, financing is key to growing a pubco and Allen said that being backed by Fortress Investment Capital meant they are very data led and said the fiscal giant are the “most data hungry people I’ve met”.
He added: “Actually, that’s made us sharper and better.”
Davids explained cash procurement was “scrappy” to begin with and Chickpea was borrowing money from “where we could get it”.
“Now, with our leased agreements, we get options to purchase the freeholds, which allows us to go in and invest where we need to build trade, and we’ve got a relationship now with NatWest, and the facility of two to three years will serve us well,” he added.
Tulloch, who stated Blind Tiger Inns is not seeking finance, said: “We do everything from cash flow because we’re not buying any of the buildings outright.
“We probably invest in about three of our existing sites for a refurb and probably spend about £1m in total through cash flow and we’ve got no debt whatsoever as a business, which is a great place to be.”
On the opportunities available to their brands, Davids revealed: “We’ve created a strong brand locally and regionally and one of the reasons we’ve managed to do that is because we’re taking pubs that are either really badly under-performing or were closed.
“We’re not in a position where we can come in and snap up a pub that’s trading well so it’s not at the expense of others.
“We are standards-driven so we’re constantly pushing on.
“Regionally, the offer, when it comes to food, drink and overnight accommodation, is improving and with the lift in standards generally that becomes an opportunity.”
Looking for an exit
Allen said there are 45,000 pubs in the UK and Punch has identified 5,000 that they would like to own and he is trying to buy 50 of those.
He said: “What we’re seeing is lots of freehold owner-operators who are looking for an exit and therefore happy to take their money and good luck to them because they built a business.
“What we really like is when we’re able to find those situations and then the management team that run that pub day to day want to step in and run it themselves.”
Meanwhile, Tulloch said the scenario is more challenging for Blind Tiger than it used to be because pubcos are “only offering the pubs they don’t want to put into the managed or the operator agreement estates so we’re not getting the same opportunities”.
He added: “Last year, we took an 800-capacity, old cinema, which isn’t something we have done with a pubco so it’s opening doors and the team are having more fun and doing different things.
“We’ve never been traditional but we’ll look outside the box and if anything’s there that’s worth a look and the team wants to do it and get excited by it, I’ll try to fund it.”
As a piece of advice for other operators, each panellist had their say…
Davids advised: “Take a punt, if you think you can. Look, it’s a challenge and it’s always been a challenge since we started. Now, more than ever, the consumer really appreciates what we’re trying to do and you can build some real strong brand loyalty if you do take that punt.”
Allen added: “If you can and you’ve got access to capital and you’ve got the confidence then be countercyclical when the opportunity arises.
“We’re sitting in a car park at the top of Chester (the location of Rooftop Social Club operated by iKO Projects), these guys have clearly gone countercyclical – look at how fabulous this place is. This is a brilliant example of how to do that.
“So if you can, you should, because the world will change. We all know cyclical. Those have been here 25 years must know that it goes round and round and at some point you’ll be better placed to come out of it.”
Finally, Tulloch said: “If you want to do what we do is make sure everybody, all the stakeholders within the team want to do it and we’re not pushing anyone to do anything.
“When we look at a site, all the team go to look, we all have a chat and if everybody agrees and we all fancy it as an ops team, then we do it. If not and feel there’s a bigger risk, we say no and walk away, and sometimes the wise man once said the best deals are the ones you walk away from and that’s probably true.”
