Chris Holmes believes market changes have turned his company
His pubs, predominantly in the East Midlands, sell an average of 500-plus barrels of cask ale each year per pub, accounting for 90% of the draught beer sales.
The 24-strong estate, generating an £8m annual turnover, sells between 10,000 and 12,000 barrels andan estimated 1,500 different cask brands each year.
"Some of the pubs are selling 20 barrels of cask ale a week," Holmes says, proudly.
"Cask ale sales are in decline nationally because a lotof pubs and suppliers have given up the ground.
We do appear to have become more and more niche, and more and more popular."
Ironically, however, Holmes believes that real ale drinkers currently enjoy unparalleled choice despite the decline in commitment to cask ale in the wider pub market.
Tynemill began in 1977 with a single pub in Newark, Nottinghamshire, and Holmes, 57, remembers a comparatively limited range of cask ales.
"Everyone is moaning about breweries closing but in terms of quality and choice of real ales, it's never been better.
I'm quite happy that the big four brewers are not that bothered about the cask ale market.
The old regional, family and micro brewers are providing all the market requires.
The choice now is unbelievable."
Tynemill's dedication to cask ale is not, however, the only characteristic that makes the company unusual.
It has a particular attitude to the role of its managers, borne out of Holmes' experience at his second pub, the Chequers in Grantham, Lincolnshire.
Five unhappy years ensued from signing an onerous private lease, and as pertinently, appointing a manager who was, to use a euphemism, a serious disappointment.
The pub was a drain on resources and Holmes drew an important lesson that has been reinforced over the years managers should be promoted from within.
"We won't employ somebody who hasn't been through our system," he says.
"We expect managers to have a lot of input themselves to landlord rather than administer.
We're not trying to create clones each time we open a pub we want each pub to be sympathetic to the community and area within which it operates.
Our managers don't have to be extroverts as long as they are concerned about quality."
So unswerving is the Tynemill belief in the ethos of internal promotion that Holmes claims to have shied away from two acquisitions last year.
"There were one or two things last year I would like to have done but didn't because we didn't have the right manager."
Tynemill pubs have become renowned for their devotion to the cause of real ale.
But they are undeservedly less well-known for the importance attached to real food.
A long time before the gastro-pub bandwagon began to roll in the early '90s, Holmes had decided taking a pride in an outlet meant time and effort spent on providing quality food as well asliquids.
Holmes was pressed into service in the kitchen at his first pub as Julian Growcock, now Tynemill managing director, ran the bar.
"My mother did the food originally," he remembers.
"But I always liked messing around in the kitchen and you learn quickly."
Today, food accounts for as much as a third of takings in some outlets.
"Some of our pubs have quite sophisticated food that would pass muster in a good restaurant, but done in a pub style," he says.
Menu size varies across the estate but even the company's more modest food offerings are governed by core beliefs.
"We'd sooner have two or three dishes a chilli, a curry and, say, a sausage in a cob and do them well than have a telephone directory of items," he says.
Tynemill's approach to food relies, again, on individual managers supported by high-quality kitchen staff.
Managers are required to have input on the food offering and do a shift in the kitchen when required.
"Managers have to be involved in the food side they can't just leave it to someone else," he says.
And it is the food side of retailing that presents the greateston-going challenges to Tynemill.
"Basically, everything is done by ourselves 99% of our cooked meals are made on the premises.
It is much easier selling decent drink than decent food.
Decent food, by definition, is labour intensive.
It is much harder and less profitable.
"But there are pride issues involved here all the directors want to be proud of what we're doing.
There are a lot of very capable people out there who can cook it's about gearing them up to cook for 40 rather than four.
"And, fortunately, we have a lot of quality people in our kitchens making food and we give them their head.
The menus are different in all our pubs but with great similarities."
A quarter century after being founded, Tynemill's operational ethos is underpinned by a fairly savvy approach to property.
The vast majority of the company's pubs are freeholds, which has been an important bedrock for expansion over the years.
"Our balance sheet base has grown by virtue of having good freeholds, where we have added huge amounts of goodwill," he says.
"That's been just as important to us as year-on-year profitability.
Buying a property for £100,000, spending £100,000, and turning it into something genuinely worth £500,000 improves your covenant for borrowing purposes.
"That makes it much easier to grow and do things quickly if you need to.
We've got one or twoleases and in every case we'd be happy to buy the freehold."
Owning so many freeholds is consistent with Holmes' hope that Tynemill will be around in 50 years, with a proud history behind it and a bright future ahead.
"Our long-term goal is to not sell up and to grow at a rate that is manageable," he says.
"I'm the majority shareholder in the company and other directors are shareholders and they have children.
"Nothing would make me happier than the next generation working in the company.
"In fact, our commercial director Colin Wilde my godson is the son of one of our shareholders.
"That makes me extremely happy; the notion of creating something worthwhile for communities that grows across the generations.
"Who knows The Independent Family Brewers of Britain might let us join one day.
