Making sense
Ever So Sensible Bars has a raft of awards to its name and is set for expansion in the next few years. Good going for a relative newcomer, writes Michelle Perrett.
If you went along to the Castle in Nottingham for a beer you'd never know you were drinking in one of the Ever So Sensible Bars. "We were going to be called Sensible Bars but someone suggested making it Ever So, and I thought why not? Simply because people remember it," Chris Bulaitis, managing director, explains. "But this is a company that's not done for a joke and I expect it to be quite large in the next three to five years."
Ever So Sensible has been up and running for just under three years and expects to go into profit for the first time this year against a turnover of £6m. The return on investment in individual sites is over 50 per cent. It has bagged several Publican Awards, including Entrepreneurial Business of the Year in 2003. For a company that opened its first Dogma site in Nottingham in 2001 and is about to open its fifth site - in Coventry - it's an impressive list.
However, it's not much of a surprise when you consider its managing director's background. Chris has worked at Allied and Little Chef and even ran a bingo hall for Mecca Leisure. He was in the concept development department at Bass (now Mitchells & Butlers) and was responsible for developing the It's a Scream student brand and for opening Loaf in Manchester in Deansgate Locks. The Loaf site was turning over a staggering £70,000 a week at the time.
"I suddenly realised that I could have actually done Loaf by myself and could have raised the finance to do it," says Chris. "It was daft that I didn't. So I set up a team around me, including partner Martin Thomas-Taylor, who runs the operations side of the business."
Chris puts the success of the business down to a basic approach of focusing on the consumer - the lack of which he believes explains the problems faced by some of the larger operators. "Most people have fairly simple tastes in their leisure time - they want to enjoy it and relax," he says. "People don't want sophistication - you can only be sophisticated for two drinks then after that you're drunk. Too many places are so far up themselves that they lose trade because people just don't feel comfortable."
When the company took on a Mitchells & Butlers lease on the Castle in Nottingham the pub was taking an average £2,000 a week. Chris explains that £22,000 was spent on revamping the "dive of a Firkin" but the site needed to be refocused for its core customers, which included local solicitors and property agents.
It seems to have worked - the Castle now averages £14,000 a week. The previous year it made a loss of £60,000, but with Ever So Sensible at the helm the site is £60,000 in profit. "We've now got a customer base that loves the Castle and talks about it. But then there are people who hate it because we don't discount," he says.
The company operates its business out of a range of leases and one freehold site in Lincoln. Ever So Sensible is looking at opening more sites, with plans for another Dogma before Easter 2005. It intends to roll out the Dogma concept as a chain and Chris is working on another small pub concept for market towns.
Ever So Sensible is financed with private equity and bank borrowing but Chris believes that going onto the stockmarket would be a big mistake for a growing pub company. "It's like being on a treadmill. If you make £10m one year you've got to make £20m the next year - there is no way they're happy if you only make £12m the next year," he points out. "Good, sustainable, incremental growth is what I believe in. Our sites that have been open for a year are trading at 12 per cent like-for-like sales with a 15 per cent increase in like-for-like profit because we are constantly getting better at our operational standards. It's profit that really matters in this business because that's the only way you are going to sustain growth."
Ever So Sensible wants to pick up as many good properties as it can over the next few years and grow into a strong medium-sized business. But funding is one of the most crucial issues, says Chris.
"I don't know how big the company will get - I'm an opportunist. If someone said 'what's your strategy?' and I said '50 sites in 10 years' I'd be talking rubbish because I don't know," he admits.
He will look at getting funding from alternative sources when the company grows, though he is aware this would change the dynamic of the business. "I have this theory that I can only know about 25 to 30 people really well who work for me," he explains.
"After 30 I stop knowing people and their businesses well. Although you don't have to be totally hands-on in this industry, you have to understand the people who work for you in order to expand. The moment you physically can't touch those businesses you're in a different zone of operation. Then you have to make sure you have the right team."
What Chris Bulaitis thinks about:
- Licensing:
"It's going to be a level playing field of mess. Applying for new licences is going to become impossible. We run sites with PELs and we have capacity levels on the door, CCTV, expensive electrical tests, different fire regulations, more fire exits and more toilet seats just to comply. I think it is wrong that everyone else can open the same hours we can and not have to meet strict regulations."
Alcohol strategy and bans on drink discounting:
"We don't do drinks discounting but some pubs may go out of business if they couldn't do it. I think it is wrong for a government to interfere commercially with a business. You couldn't imagine a government saying you can't sell shoes for under £10."
Red tape:
"I don't see it as red tape I see it as a challenge. If you can' t operate in the environment we have to work in then go and work somewhere else."
Smoking:
"We've made all our restaurants no-smoking. If the law comes in I'm quite worried what it would do operationally. We don't have a garden at our Nottingham sites and we often reach capacity in our Dogma sites. We have queues so people couldn't just nip outside for a smoke then come back in."
Pictured: The Castle in Nottingham was a design winner in the 2004 Publican Awards.
