Leading pub company Enterprise Inns has announced it is to further develop its 172-strong managed tenancy arm Beacon, backed by a £2m investment.
The funds will go towards forming a dedicated national operating division within Enterprise’s leased and tenanted business. Enterprise has also announced it plans to add 30 pubs to the estate within the next 12 months. Fourteen pubs have recently been transferred to a Beacon partnership agreement.
Beacon’s first dedicated support team, consisting of 10 regional managers, will be led by Mark Brooke who has been appointed divisional director for Beacon. Marketing, property and business support will be provided by Enterprise’s head office.
According to Enterprise, the ‘highly supported managed tenancy model’ intended for wet-led, community pubs, allows tenants to deliver greater value, backed by ‘a dedicated retail team focused on sales, marketing, customer service and cost control’. Traditional wet-led tenanted pubs have been some of the hardest hit by downturns in the economy, twinned with a general trend for fall in alcohol consumption in the UK over recent years.
Brooke said: ‘By having a stand-alone, dedicated national division we are able to enhance Beacon and introduce a new way of working with more frequent business visits and a greater level of support.
‘Regional managers are now having structured monthly meetings with publicans, rather than once a quarter, and we have introduced a “Your Pub” retail agenda so that each business meeting focuses on a specific topic such as marketing, merchandising, product quality, cash control.’