Diary

David Brown draws in his Hawn

Loveable UK sales director (on-trade) at Whyte & Mackay, David Brown attended a recent fund-raising dinner with the equally loveable film star Goldie Hawn. There's a perfectly straight-forward explanation for Goldie's extraordinary facial expression. And it's not trapped wind. Ask David next time you see him.

Only five low points for Summit

Summit Clubs, as

you'll know, entered administration last month. Unlike some other administrations, this

one looks like there won't

be too much collateral damage.

Just five sites sit with administrator Antony Batty and there's rumoured to

be interest in four of them.

For the record, the sites are located in Truro, Wood Green, Clacton-on-Sea, Nottingham and Slough.

Undercover in Leicestershire

Everards has recruited 1,000 "agents" for Mission Enjoyable. The Leicestershire brewer and retailer used its website to enlist 1,000 customers to make mystery visits to its pubs — and report back on what they find. Boss Stephen Gould says: "Each agent gets £15 to make a visit — and invariably they spend more than that when they make a visit to one of our pubs. Our tenants often tell us they want more agent visits." The idea, reports Gould, came out of a brain-storming of its six-strong marketing team. Now agents even get sent to suss out a new pub the company is thinking of buying. This virtuous circle of customer interest and feedback means Everards now regards its 1,000-strong army of mystery customer as "advocates" for the business. It's the sharpest of thinking, isn't it?

Be it Bay or Day it's still Robbie

In the days before it was revealed that a new Robert Tchenguiz company, Bay Restaurant Group, would buy the foodier parts of Laurel out of administration, City Diary contacts had furnished two possible names for it. One name suggested was Bay Trading Restaurant Group, not a million miles away from the eventual name. The other one was a bit hopeless as it turned out, perhaps because of cloth ears at this end — Day Trading Restaurants. Hard to think of a less appropriate name really.

Lighthouse goes dark in Devon

Marston's has closed its Lighthouse venue in Paignton, Devon, because it's not pulling in punters. Manager Leigh Dryden pinpoints one other painful reality. Teams of doorstaff had also put financial pressures on the business, which had to have a minimum of six security people even if the 450-capacity pub was not full. He said: "You need one person for every 75 people. They have to work from 8pm until close — you can't send them home if it's quiet. It's more than double barstaff costs."

Sharing the real-ale love

The Camra Investment Club carries on putting its money where its mouth is. February saw it buying 300,000 shares in Cains as well as shares in Black Sheep, Marston's, Fuller's and JD Wetherspoon. The club also managed to acquire 5,000 Wadsworth A shares. At the end of February, the Club's fund stood at £8.97m and the unit value was £3.92m.

It's all sell, sell, buy, buy at Globe

Globe, run by Scottish & Newcastle Pub Enterprises, sold five pubs in the latest quarter for £5.1m and has another 11 on the market. The company plans to buy another package of 10 pubs from the cash produced — a deal expected to complete by its year-end in May.

Rent rolls the wrong way

The rent roll at Globe dropped by £300,000

in its third quarter, according to a report

to bond holders. This, Globe reports, "reflects

the impact of 17 tenancy changes at the start of

the calendar year —

the traditional time for above-average tenancy changes". A leading trade figure asks: is this a euphemism for doing a runner?

Eco schmeco, the building is bling

Some folks think JD Wetherspoon's (JDW)

eco-friendly pub, Kettleby Cross, in Melton Mowbray will be its first and its last. The pub uses around 8% less electricity than other similar-sized boozers. JDW has set a broader target of reducing its overall energy consumption by 5%. JDW's new development consultant Chris Large tells City Diary: "It was a test-bed for new technology. We tried everything there and we'll apply the good bits. Some things work, some things don't." The decision to abandon the eco-pub model was welcomed by the Association of Environment Conscious Building. Dismissive to the point of unfairness, spokeswoman Liz Reason said: "This was a classic case of spending lots of money on what can best be described as eco-bling, little of it proven to reduce C02 emissions in a meaningful way."

Firkin franchises storming stateside

Firkin, the brand created by Capital Pub Company boss David Bruce, may be a shadow of its former self in the UK, but it's good to see it going gangbusters in the US. Franchise opportunities start at $297,850 and there are plans to open 14 new pubs in 2008. The company has already opened four locations this year and has another two planned in the next few weeks

in California and Washington. "Firkin has seen tremendous growth over the past year," says Larry Isaacs, Firkin director of marketing.

"In 2007 we opened seven pubs in the US and sold multi-unit franchising deals in 10 states. We are very confident that this year we will double that number."