Charity: Carvery is key to M&B gain
Managed operator Mitchells & Butlers (M&B) will have opened 34 new Pub & Carvery sites by Easter, in an expansion drive that is likely to see the brand double in size to 100 sites in a single year.
The plan means that Pub & Carvery is the company's key brand expansion. The rise in the importance of Pub & Carvery as a "category killer" for M&B in the last 18 months is indicated by the number of 239 former Whitbread pubs converted to the format.
In August 2006, M&B planned to convert just four sites to Pub & Carvery. The final conversion figure is likely to be around 46, which is around 20% of the Whitbread acquisitions.
One Whitbread conversion, the Astley Arms in Seaton Sluice, near Whitley Bay, has seen the number of meals rise from 1,400 as a Brewers Fayre to 5,400 in one week in late August as a Pub & Carvery.
A half dozen or so Pub & Carvery venues have already burst through the 5,000-covers-a-week barrier. Regional operations director Steve Cash said: "The first four Whitbread conversions to Pub & Carvery were a roaring success. Pub & Carvery offers the sort of value for money that Brewers Fayre had lost."
£3.50 carvery
Pub & Carvery is M&B's budget carvery offer with meals costing £3.50 throughout the week.
The brand is set to be expanded to around 100 sites by the end of M&B's financial year in September - it has 71 at the moment.
M&B opened 13 Pub & Carvery sites in the three weeks before Christmas. Pub & Carvery has two key differences to Toby Carvery aside from price: it serves frozen rather than fresh vegetables and silverside beef rather than topside.
