Marston's price deal offers growth
Marston's Pub Company has unveiled two initiatives aimed at providing its 1,600 tenants with a chance to grow their businesses.
Division boss Alistair Darby, who spent this week guest editing the Morning Advertiser, has revealed that the company will offer its new freetrade pricing deal, Advance, to around 600 of its best lessees after a successful trial.
"The new agreement has the potential to generate an extra £7,500 of gross margin in its first year of operation, in each one of these pubs," he said.
At the same time Marston's has also revealed that it will be freezing the prices to tenants and lessees of its own ales, its lager range — excluding Carling — and ciders before 1 October.
The move is in contrast to Enterprise Inns, which has already announced that it is passing on a 3.5% wholesale price rise to its tenants.
Darby said: "We have worked very closely with Heineken, Carlsberg and InBev to enable us to maintain the prices of their brands until the autumn, and so help our tenants and lessees to capitalise on a recovering economy and a World Cup summer.
"We are also delighted to extend the ex-duty price freeze on our superb own-brewed beers to two years, since we last increased their prices in October 2008."
Marston's Pub Company will increase Carling by 6% from 1 April as a result of Coors' decision to realign its price in the on-trade ahead of its competitors.
"We hope that we will know by then what the Chancellor intends to do with duty and that our move to hold the majority of our prices will encourage him to stop raising beer taxes. It's about time that pubs and their customers were given a break," added Darby.
The Advance agreement has been trialed in 30 of Marston's pubs. Pubs that implemented new business-building initiatives on the back of the Advance agreement have seen volumes grow by 5% year on year.
The agreement stands alongside the existing lease and allows beer to be bought at freetrade prices in return for an additional payment on top of the rent.
This payment is calculated to be £3,900 less than the extra discount stream in year one, in order that the lessee can invest in initiatives to grow his business.
