Interview: Roseacre Pub Company

P&B: Thanks for having us at The Roseycombe, Ash. Could you tell us about the history of Roseacre Pub Company and how you joined the business?
AG: I’ve been in the industry for just shy of 20 years. I started as a chef when I was 18 in the corporate world. I was with Spirit Pub Company for around 10 years, and then a guy called Michael Thomas, who was my area manager for Spirit, started Roseacre in December 2014, so it has been going just over 10 years. 

Michael messaged me when he had his second pub, about four months into his journey, and asked if I wanted to join Roseacre. He said: “Come and join me, we’re going to grow this company.” And I fell in love with it from day one. From there, we grew a pub company together. I started working in operations two years in, then, after four years, Michael said: “Look, Ash, I want to get out at the age of 60. This is the plan for you.” Just under two years ago, he sold it to me. We’re now at 10 sites and we turned over £17m last year.

P&B: Wow. What a story and what a success. Are all 10 of your pubs similar in operation and style? 
AG: They are busy sites, all suburban outside of the city centre, lots of mature housing around, lots of people. Our pubs should be the reason people don’t go into the city centre. We have enough premium drink, wine, barista coffee paired with good quality food, all done at a really good value. That’s our business model. It’s about value, not about price.

We’re currently working in the tenanted model, with Star Pubs and also Everards. Star have got some great pubs and invest heavily. When it comes to our offer, there’s more of a managed feel. We have a model, which we copy and paste. We have a few caveats to that, where we’ve got a few brands that are a bit more premium. But I guess eight or nine of our pubs are copy and paste.

When we started, we were really passionate about the pubs leading the way – Roseacre as a name was hidden. But as we’ve gotten bigger, we’ve used the Roseacre brand in places. We pair the pubs with people. We’re really passionate about never being corporate or branded, so although you could get a slick, commercial feel about what we do, with a great menu and great feel about our pubs, it should always feel personal.

Roseacre specialises in carveries

P&B: How did it feel to suddenly be given a pub company to run?
AG: It will be two years in October since I bought Roseacre. I was really nervous, because at that point we were still turning over £12-13m. It has been tough at times, the burden and the weight, and I guess a lot of solo operators will say it can be quite lonely at times, quite a lonely space. But we’ve got some great, honest people around us. The business has grown through its people – people who have been with us now for 10 years and people that will be with us for a lifetime. 

P&B: And you clearly hit the ground running, as revenue is still an impressive amount…
AG: Most of the sites are taking £1.5m up to £2m. And we do that through being great value. We have people that trade up and people that trade down. People are visiting us for lots of different occasions, so some will come for a Sunday carvery as a family. Then you’ll get a mid-week dinner in because they can’t be bothered to cook. We’ll get some date nights in there. Grandma’s birthday. We’re ticking so many boxes. Bouncy castles in the garden, drinks after work, drinks at the weekend. We are probably ticking five or six occasions for a person or a family through an accessible price – not too expensive, not too cheap.

P&B: You mention your pubs should keep people from city centres. How do you achieve that?
AG: For example, if you came here about 15 years ago, this pub would have been serving a G and T in a straight glass, whereas a city centre site was doing the trendier stuff in balloon glasses. And what’s happened is that trend has moved out to suburban pubs. Another example would be we serve all the premium lagers. We’ve got cocktails, we’ve got barista coffee, whereas that wouldn’t have been happening here 15 years ago. 

We don’t have to invent the curve, that’s why we will never go into a city centre. A trend normally happens in London and two years later we’re probably seeing it here. Look, for example, I’m not going to say katsu curry is on trend in our pubs, but it’s still trendy, whereas katsu curry is dead and buried in London. We make decisions based on the customer coming through the door, rather than my own love for food. We have to be careful that we don’t go too trendy. But that’s lucky, because we can watch the trends and jump on the back of them.

Room with a view at The Roseycombe in Coventry

P&B: You fell in love with Roseacre when you joined Michael in 2015. Why was that? 
AG: It’s all about people making decisions based on people. That hasn’t changed from day one – make a decision based on a person and create environments where guests want to be, are proud of visiting and where a team is proud of working. We’re at over 400 people working for us now and it still feels the same with 10 pubs as it did with two. I think we’ve got great food, but I’m not going to sit here today to tell you that we’ve got the best fish and chips in the country. However, we have great food and have invested in pubs, but our people are genuinely warm and care about what they do – that’s our pursuit. 

We’ve onboarded a communications platform, which has also helped. We were talking via email and WhatsApp before, but our people and culture manager Charlie Thompson launched this new project and we now communicate on one platform. Then we’ve got a company values scratchcard where you can win everything from a £5 Roseacre voucher all the way through to a European trip away. What we do is endorse great behaviour, so when someone aligns with our values, we endorse it. 

P&B: So what are those values?
AG: We have little DOUG, our dog mascot. It’s an acronym for Deliver on our promise, Opportunity and experience, Unity, and Genuine and warm. If you deliver on those DOUG values, you get a scratchcard. One of our cleaners got one the other day and won a £5 voucher. But it’s not about that money – it’s about the joy in her face when she got something that proved she aligned with the values, that we’re bringing her closer. Then we put that win on our team chat so 350 or 400 people see that she has won a card because she delivered these values. 

P&B: That’s a really nice idea, not to mention clever. Any other gems you’d like to share with Pub & Bar readers?
AG: We have what we call ‘hot dog moments’, which you’ll know about if you’ve read Will Guidara’s Unreasonable Hospitality. At Eleven Madison Park, Will heard a table saying: “New York’s been so good, but we haven’t tried a hot dog from a cart.” He overheard it, ran two blocks, got this hot dog in front of one of their chefs, and then ran it to the table, putting four plates down. They didn’t even know it was coming, and they were absolutely blown away. We try and put that hot dog moment in where we can. Look, we’re a pub company, a suburban pub company, but there is opportunity to make moments that emotionally buy people in. 

What really makes us stand out is our genuine desire to serve – from the moment someone walks through the door to the moment they leave. It’s something that’s talked about widely in the industry, but doesn’t always happen. We have people who make it happen every time.

The Roseycombe, Coventry

P&B: The Roseycombe is looking very fresh. How did this investment work and what’s the ROI?
AG: This pub was sat here doing nothing, so we invested in it last year. Star Pubs contributed just over £200,000 and we put about £250,000 in. We normally try and recoup the cost in 18 months to two years. And then we normally have a five-year tenancy, so we’re looking at three years where we can hopefully push on properly. 

P&B: Your story is a very positive one. Why is it that Roseacre is succeeding and growing, while others are struggling to stay open?
AG: I don’t for one minute think we’re exempt from it. I think we operate in the right market space, but we have to continue to be the best we can be. We can’t take our finger off the pulse because we could slip. Last year, like-for-like, we were up 5.3% and had a company growth of 18.7%, and we have grown again the first two weeks of this financial year because of the sunshine. But we’re not exempt. We have to work harder than we’ve ever done to convert and to stand out in the marketplace. 

As a business, the autumn Budget is costing us £600,000 a year. We’ve managed to mitigate about £200,000 of that and £400,000 we’re going to have to absorb. The way we will do that is to increase market share, increase our sales line. So we will still convert in the same way, but the percentage of conversion will be less. Last year would have been around 8% or 9% conversion, whereas this year will be 6% or 7%. And the reason we’re having to absorb that money is that we can’t put the price back onto the customer – it’s important that no one ever feels like we’re expensive. The easy thing would be to put £2 more on a cheese and bacon burger, but then you’re going to see numbers decline. 

P&B: So you’re at 10 sites. How long before number 11 rolls around?
AG: We’ve got our first freehold site coming on board this summer. It’s in Leicestershire. It will be a more premium offer because of where it currently sits in the marketplace. 

Quite a few freehold operators have approached me recently about giving back pubs, but April’s costs onwards are so high, so I think there will be opportunity as we move further into the year and into next year. 

I can’t give you a magic number of what we can grow to. I can see us getting to 12 to 15 at this stage. I can’t see it being north for 15 because the ‘people bit’ is too important. So, at 15 pubs, we’re probably going to have close to 1,000 people working for us. I’m not saying we can’t go north of 15, but it’s about it being the right time for the company and the people in it, and how we still hang on to what we’re passionate about. Do the people still feel part of something that’s bigger than just their pub? And could it get to a point where it feels too corporate? I’m really, really against that. It needs to feel individual and personal. 

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