Upham to stick to heartland as it seeks new funding sources

The company told the Publican’s Morning Advertiser ​it will spend £1m on refitting its 12th pub – the White Hart in Overton, near Basingstoke - which is earmarked to open in January.

Before that the company will open the Plantation, formerly the New Beehive at Canford Cliffs in Poole, on 28 November.

David Butcher, director and co-founder of the Upham Group, said they had reached the £16m threshold for Enterprise Investment Schemes and were now focussing on preference shares. He said they had raised just over £3m so far and hoped to generate a further £2m by December.

He said: “We are looking to acquire six or seven pubs over the next year. We are reaching capacity at the brewery so we want to be able to move to a site that would allow us to achieve a £5m turnover on the brewery alone.

“We are not looking to spread beyond our heartland (Hampshire, Berkshire, Sussex and Wiltshire). We don’t like the idea of travelling three or four hours between pubs and we have never had any intention of creating a brand with pubs dotted around the country. Our aim is to reach 30/40 pubs and beyond that we would want to grow organically and in a controlled way.”

Freeholds​

Butcher said the company would continue to focus on freeholds for the moment but added “that is not to say that if an attractive free-of-tie leasehold came about it couldn’t work for us”.

Chris Phillips, Upham’s chief executive, said a concentration on personnel was key to the firm’s success. He added that Robb Harris has now been brought on board as finance director and that he was comfortable the company had “a strong board”.

He added: “The challenge is always personnel. We believe we have some of the best general managers and chefs going but that is because we present them with the right offer. We offer them a good salary with bonuses for achieving and exceeding their EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization) targets.

“At the moment we wouldn’t want to have an executive chef. We want those decisions to be made site by site. We have a general manager and a chef lined up before we buy a site so they can be involved in every stage of the project.”

Character​

Phillips insisted the ethos of Upham was on maintaining the individual characters of each pub.

He said: “We don’t expect to walk into one of our pubs and immediately be able to recognise it as an Upham pub.”

The pair agreed that there are “plenty of different routes to explore going forward”, including a public listing.

Phillips said: “The question is at what point are we the right size? Probably, we’re not far off.”