Treasure in the heart of Cornwall
The Cross House Inn at Metherell, near the Cornwall/Devon border, is on the market with Colliers Robert Barry.
The former farmhouse, built in 1880, features a bar, 58-cover restaurant, 30-cover function room, four-bedroom owners' accommodation, garden and car park.
Ian Ridley, of Colliers Robert Barry, said: "The Cross House Inn is a welcoming, extensively-refurbished and popular destination country freehouse, thoughtfully laid out to cater for diners, drinkers and families."
The owners have run the inn for seven years, working three and a half days a week.
Turnover was £275,136 last year and the freehold is on the market at £795,000.
Ridley said: "This is an excellent opportunity to purchase a profitable business."
THE AGENTS
Paul Breen
Director,
Colliers CRE
After it has spent most of the last five years in the doldrums, are we finally beginning to see the high street's long-awaited revival?
The '90s saw an unprecedented level of new openings: former banks and furniture stores were converted to large branded outlets in virtually every town centre. The market had to cool down eventually, as most towns became saturated with licensed venues. With the supply of venues outweighing demand, certain operators were forced to discount prices heavily, making the high street even less attractive to pub groups and leading to speculation that it may never recover.
It's certainly too early to say that everything is rosy on the high street, but we are starting to see signs of a recovery.Perhaps the best indicator is the increasing number of operators actively seeking new opportunities. During the perceived downturn, only JD Wetherspoon and Barracuda were consistently acquiring nationally, but now we are seeing the likes of Laurel and Marston's seeking individual sites after a period of only really focusing on company acquisitions. Others, such as Inventive Leisure, Novus, Regent Inns and Mint Group, are also keen to grow, so there is no shortage of demand. But satisfying this need is proving to be much more difficult than anticipated.
Inevitably in such a saturated marketplace, units are available in most major town and cities, but with operators reluctant to part with better-performing outlets, those on the market often fail to catch buyers' imagination. Every operator is trying to acquire the perfect site: the one situated in the busiest location, has the ideal configuration for their brand and is let at a rent that they consider affordable. They are often disappointed, as most of the available units can't even satisfy one of these key criteria. So we are finding it increasingly common that existing units are sold to new entrants who can be more flexible, to restaurant groups and - ironically - to some of those retailers and banks which were selling these buildings to pub groups only 10 years ago.
With many local authorities having called time on new licences a while ago, it seems likely that fierce competition will face those few sites that are ideally suited to operator requirements. I suspect companies keen to grow quickly may have little option but to go back to looking at group and company acquisitions. Don't be surprised to see further consolidation on the high street in the months to come.
