Ferrier has been with the premium pub and restaurant operator since 2012, joining as group strategy director and serving as managing director the last four years.
Last year the group, which is a finalist in several categories for this year’s Publican Awards, underwent a rebrand from Brasserie Bar Co to Heartwood, marking its first step to becoming a freehold pub company with rooms underscored by a premium brasserie division.
Rebrand
Following the rebrand, the firm secured £100m funding to support the rollout of its new model, £50m of which was agreed with OakNorth Bank with an additional £50m invested by Alchemy Partners.
Having used the funding for acquisitions of freehold pubs and sites with rooms, the group is on track to grow to more than 60 sites by 2027 with plans to provide close to 500 boutique bedrooms and five new venues close to competition last summer.
These ambitions will create a further 1,500 jobs and down the nation and take the total number of employees to 2,700, according to Heartwood.
Brand pillars
Speaking in July last year, Ferrier told the Morning Advertiser: “Having taken investment, one of the key things we always felt [was] we had this lovely pubco, White Brasserie Company, but we hadn't really spent a huge amount of time to ever embed proper brand pillars.
“When you take investment, as we have done, it shows you that we're about to invest and open lots more pubs, we should be very clear about what it is we're trying to do and who we're doing it for.
“We started off by doing a really deep dive piece of consumer research, including focus groups with quantitative and qualitative research, lots of different ways on thousands of people to try and understand what the pubs meant to them.”
