For groups sitting at between three and 10 sites, the attraction is clear, enough scale to professionalise, improve buying terms and offer career progression, without losing day to day control of standards, culture and the guest experience.
Responses from five operators suggest the same theme keeps resurfacing - small does not mean static, but growth has to be paced, properly resourced and led from the front.
Scale without distance
Cheshire Cat Pubs & Bars currently operates seven pubs, but director Tim Bird said the number has not been a fixed target.
“We have seven pubs at present. I wouldn’t say seven is a deliberate choice as we have looked at other closed pubs and made an offer on one recently which fell through,” he said.
For Bird, the benefit of remaining privately run is the absence of external pressure to expand.
“We have no venture capitalists or shareholders involved, so we can do what we think is right for the business at any one time,” he added. “If one is under pressure to expand that’s when costly mistakes can be made.”
Three Cheers Pub Co, which operates 10 sites, described a similar approach. Director Mark Reynolds said the estate has reached what he called a “sweet spot”.
“We currently operate 10 sites. Reaching this number has been a deliberate and organic journey rather than a race to a target figure,” he said. “At 10 sites, we’ve found a sweet spot, we have enough scale to justify a dedicated support structure and command better commercial terms, but we remain agile.”
That agility was a repeated advantage across operators. Reynolds said Three Cheers can move quickly when performance or trends shift.
“If we see a trend shifting or a menu item failing, we can pivot the entire estate in 48 hours, something that takes larger chains months of board meetings to achieve,” he said.
Proximity and visibility
For many small multi-site groups, culture is not treated as a brand exercise but as something reinforced through proximity and personal leadership.
Bird said the group’s family feel is part of what guests recognise.
“The team are like family,” he said. “In a small business you have far more time for the most vital thing, spending time with our people and of course our guests and customers.”
He added that the ability to visit each pub regularly helps protect consistency.
“We can visit every pub regularly and never lose sight of what makes us a success and that is the consistency of our offer over 16 years of trading,” Bird said.
Seafood Pub Company managing director Joycelyn Neve described the same benefit through what she called proximity and visibility.
“The biggest advantage is proximity. We know our teams personally, we understand each pub individually, and we can remain closely connected to the guest experience,” she said. “In a smaller portfolio, leadership is visible and accessible which means culture can be built through consistency and presence.”
Beckford Group co-owner Dan Brod also pointed to hands on leadership as the key advantage of remaining relatively small as the group expands.
“It means we, the three co-owners, can be properly hands on, remaining in touch with all our sites and all our people,” he said. “The benefit is that our culture is real and not a confected concept.”
The clearest risk point for all is not a specific number of sites, but the moment growth outpaces infrastructure, or creates distance between owners and operations.
Reynolds said risk emerges when management layers become a barrier.
“The risk creeps in when that layer becomes a barrier rather than a support network,” he said. “The danger zone is when owners stop making business decisions based on what they see and feel in the pubs, and start relying solely on reports filtered through others.”
Neve agreed there is no set threshold, but warned that standards can be diluted if the business stretches faster than its systems and people.
“Growth introduces greater risk when it creates distance between leadership and the team and guest experience, whether that’s geography or resource,” she said. “If expansion outpaces the infrastructure, systems and people needed to support it, standards can become diluted.”
She added that the group’s hardest growing pains came earlier than many might assume.
“Going from one to two was still one if not the hardest growing pains we’ve experienced,” Neve said. “The reality was we were one team now running two sites, without a central support function.”
Ardent Pub Group managing director Dom Jacobs, which currently operates three pubs, framed growth in terms of “stepping stones” linked to head office resourcing.
“There are different stepping stones with pubs and it ultimately comes down to your head office resourcing,” he said. He added that moving between phases can require significant central investment, which “makes your business less profitable, opens you up to more risk”.
Jacobs said the shift comes when a founder’s physical presence is no longer the determining factor in performance.
“As you grow beyond that, naturally your ability to do that from a time perspective changes,” he said. “When you have to rely on more people to do that, then I suppose that’s where risk is introduced.”
The trade off
Operators also highlighted a structural challenge for smaller estates - talent progression. Jacobs said one downside of staying at a small number of sites is the limited ability to provide promotion pathways.
“If you’ve got talented people and you’re not growing beyond that, you are going to lose people on the way because they want to keep growing, they want a promotion,” he said.
Reynolds said Three Cheers benefits from being large enough to offer progression without losing the ability to stay close to teams.
“A single pub can’t always offer a career path, but a group of 10 can offer real progression,” he said, adding that staff still “can pick up the phone to the owners directly”.
Neve also flagged the balance between remaining connected and being large enough to keep good people.
“Enough size to be able to provide career progression to enough people is also key for retention,” she said.
While the appetite to grow is still there, several operators emphasised that current cost pressures have reduced the margin for error.
Three Cheers’ Reynolds said 2026 will be a consolidation year after acquiring The Trafalgar in Chelsea last October, pointing to employers’ national insurance as a factor shaping pace.
“The cost pressures placed on businesses of our size, particularly the increase in employers’ national insurance, have forced us to reassess the pace of our growth,” he said. “We are focusing on strengthening our current estate rather than risking over exposure.”
Neve said Seafood Pub Co is “absolutely looking to grow further”, but that the priority is investing in existing sites first.
“There is far less margin for error than there was five or ten years ago,” she said. “Growth has to be supported by the right infrastructure, the right people and the right site.”
Cheshire Cat, meanwhile, is focused on extracting more value from existing assets, including rooms and event space, while remaining open to the right opportunity.
“If the right pub comes along then we would look at it but there is no pressure on us at all,” Bird said.
Beckford is moving towards 10 sites and intends to stop there. Brod said the group will have “10 sites and that’s where we want to stay”, adding: “We really believe that in hospitality, small is beautiful.”
Taken together, the responses echo that for many of today’s emerging pub groups, the goal is not maximum scale, but sustainable scale, built around control, culture and a guest experience that owners can still feel first hand.
