Clear Pub Company buys 25 Punch sites
Two ex-Punch Taverns senior managers have teamed up to create a new pub company after acquiring 25 sites from their former employers.
Backed by Allied Irish bank, Duncan Ward and Andy Wilkinson have joined forces with Andrew Lawton Smith, a partner at law firm Wragge & Co, to launch the Clear Pub Company (CPC).
Ward becomes CPC's managing director; Wilkinson is operations director, with Lawton Smith assuming the role of non-executive chairman.
All three principal shareholders have also invested their own money in the venture.
The 25 pubs, bought for an undisclosed sum, were among those Spirit managed houses converted over to leased businesses. They are spread mainly through the Midlands and the North, with one site, the Mortimer, on London's Tottenham Court Road.
"This is a great opportunity for us," Lawton Smith told thepublican.com. "Duncan and Andy are skilled and experienced individuals who with their colleagues will be able to take this business forward.
The acquired outlets would present two distinct offers, he added. "We'll have our 'Cookhouse' branded value food offering, housed in a classic urban boozer, some of which are large former John Barras sites," he said.
"And then there'll be our City Tavern offer, which will consist of unbranded individual pubs aimed at the local market, offering locally-sourced food dishes."
Lawton Smith said the sites have a combined turnover of £14m staffed by more than 400 across the estate.
He added that CPC would be looking to grow to around 100 sites over the next five years, either by one-off opportunistic deals or once the group was of a size and scale to buy bigger tranches of sites.
An investment programme in conjunction with Punch was already under way, he said, and the pubs were "well placed" to operate well under the smoking ban.
