Fuller's repairs on track in heatwave

After posting 10% like-for-like sales growth in the managed estate in Q1, chief executive Simon Emeny told M&C Report: “It’s early in the year, but we are pleased with the start we have made.”

He said that the profile of the Fuller’s pub estate had changed considerably in recent years.

“We have far more garden pubs than ever before. The rain we experienced 12 months ago had an unprecedented impact on those pubs. But in the sunshine people flock to our gardens, which in some pubs can double or treble trading space. They bring more people out to eat and encourage more families to come to our pubs.”

Emeny refused to be drawn into speculating on the precise financial impact of the weather, but he insisted that underlying trading performance was strong.

“We’ve never tried to strip out the effects of weather or major events on our business.

“The numbers are the numbers. But when we have had weeks with similar weather to last year we’ve been ahead.”

Commenting on the accelerated repairs programme that dampened like-for-like profit by 1% in the tenanted estate, Emeny said: “We’ve continued to invest through the downturn in both our managed and tenanted estate, and we’re now seeing the returns from that. This time last year we had earmarked lots of external redecorations, but we just couldn’t do them all because of the rain. We’ve gone back to do them now, which has caused a short-term dip in profit.”
Emeny said he was particularly excited by the performance of the company’s new craft lager and cider brands. He said: “Frontier [lager] has been on test in 25 pubs for eight weeks, and we’re very pleased with its progress.

“We’ll be extending the trial over the next couple of months to 50 pubs.”