Uni landlord is bottom of class
A London lessee is angry that his new landlord — a university — is forcing him to share trading information with a competitor via a shared ordering system.
Kieran Rice runs the Ye Olde White Horse in St Clement's Lane, a former Enterprise Inns pub bought by the London School of Economics (LSE) in October.
Under the terms of the lease, Rice must place drinks orders through the LSE's preferred suppliers. This means that he must pass his confidential ordering information to a neighbouring competitor pub, the George, which acts as a portal for the LSE's ordering system.
"The LSE is forcing us to give our direct competitors our sales information so it can be put through a central ordering system, which also happens to be 20% more expensive than that of Enterprise Inns," said Rice.
"We have the right to run our business on a fair playing field with reasonable prices.
"Since the LSE took over, our turnover has stayed the same but our gross profit has fallen from 52% to 42%."
Meanwhile, Rice has criticsed the LSE for not offering a broader selection of drinks and failing to honour a commitment made with Enterprise to install a catering kitchen and carry out external repairs.
He said: "If the works aren't going to be done, we should be compensated accordingly."
But a spokesman for the LSE said: "Having acquired the freehold, we don't see ourselves as being bound by that condition Enterprise Inns had entered into."
He maintained that the university wants Ye Olde White Horse to be a "viable business". "It is not in our interests to make the business anti-competitive."
