Jowsey: ‘2,000 pubs would be a good number for Admiral’

Jowsey told The MA Admiral has invested around £100m into its estate over the past three years.

This included procuring 37 tenanted pubs from Fuller’s for £18.3m in May last year and 18 from Marston’s in September 2024 for an undisclosed sum alongside work to refurbish existing sites.

Most recently, the pubco acquired 21 leased and tenanted pubs from RedCat.

While Jowsey did not disclose the cost of the acquisition, he said roughly £35m has been invested this year, with a similar outlay planned for next year.

Since he joined in 2019, Admiral has grown from roughly 775 pubs to 1,350, predominantly wet-led sites.

Right way

While the chief executive said 2,000 pubs would be optimal for Admiral, he stressed growth would continue at a manageable pace.

He continued: “We know what we are good at, so we are not going to diversify into different pubs or operations, we are focused on community pubs, that’s what we do and what we love.

“Growth opportunities have obviously got to be the right price, in the right place and community focused. We probably turn down more than we go after.”

He added: “We’ve got bigger, but we haven’t lost our approach. There’s no one size fits all in our businesses. There has to be trust on both sides to make the most of the relationship and the pub.

“We’re not a charity by any means, the culture is really important to us, but we are a business and if we don’t make money we can’t reinvest but it’s about doing that in the right way.”

The chief executive explained there are currently only three people down the chain between him and Admiral licensees, which he said was really important.

Potential for growth

“I don’t want a huge organisation with lots of layers”, He continued. “We like to feel as though we can put our arms around the business and talk to everybody directly.”

Jowsey added the Chester-based pubco had already identified potential opportunities for capital investment with the former RedCat sites, but that getting to know the licensees and their operation was crucial.

He assured nothing would be put in place until the New Year and that it would be “business as usual” over the all important Christmas period.

“The key thing for us is to make sure we understand everything about the pubs and the licensee”, he said.

“Then we’ll try and understand what the potential is for growth in that pub, whether that’s through capital investment or something else around the retail offer. So, we’re always looking for opportunity to make them more sustainable.

“Most of our customers come from within a mile of the pub and we tend to recruit from the community, so most of licensees know their customers, they know the area and want to provide a really good community service as well as run a small business.”