Cottrell highlighted the “very low” results achieved by the company in a past Tenant Track survey by him!. He said Enterprise “has grown” but has “a long, long way to go”.
Enterprise carried out its first survey of its publicans in 2013. “It was a harsh survey, there were strong comments. But it was a good thing to start and a good thing to build on”, Cottrell said.
The survey highlighted some areas where publicans are broadly happy - such as its food offer and support, regional managers that are “trusted and listened to”, and its training programme. However, tenants indicated that improvements were needed in areas such as frequency of regional manager visits, digital support, communication and property issues.
Speaking at the Tenanted Pub Company Summit, he said: “It will mean a changing culture and that has to be started with listening. Once we listen we have to respond. Once we’ve responded we have to plan and we have to execute, and we’ll be measured on our execution. When we’ve finished executing, we listen again.”
Cottrell said he understood that the landlord/tenant relationship can be “tense and fraught” but he understands there’s “an awful lot we can do for those tenants”.
He outlined ways in which Enterprise is focusing on improving the level of support it gives to licensees.
The first concerned regional managers. Cottrell pointed out that three years ago Enterprise had 20% more pubs and has retained the same number of regional managers. The plan is to halve the amount of time they spend on administration so they can spend more with tenants.
Secondly, to “upweight” the service levels for publicans. An example of the change includes this year having 50% of new lessees and tenants receiving additional support in their first 100 days with areas such as cashflow and their business plan.
Buying power
Another area concerns leveraging the pub company’s scale and buying power. “We must help our publicans manage their costs; we must leverage our national scale,” said Cottrell. He gave examples of wifi being introduced into 1,600 pubs that didn’t have it a year ago, and food deals that are “increasing in depth and intensity”.
Investments are also crucial, and Cottrell pointed out that a £60m capex spend is earmarked for this year, with 30% of schemes focused on business growth. Last year 1,000 pubs benefited from investments of £30k to £60k. “We expect to do 1,200 this year.”
Meanwhile, the Beacon managed tenancies have been an “unparalleled success”, reporting five consecutive months of double digit growth.
Cottrell stressed the need to focus on “preventing issues before they happen” and to “minimise the gaps between what we promise and what we deliver”, without promising more than can be delivered.