Pub giant Wetherspoon is targeting 1,000 sites as it bucks a crisis gripping other locals.
The chain now has 814 pubs across the country, down from 955 at its peak in 2015. But it reckons there is a thirst to grow its estate again, and to get to about 1,000 over the next decade. Some of the locations where it plans on opening new boozers includes universities, airports and holiday parks.
The new estimate is despite widespread pub closures elsewhere in the sector, with the Campaign for Real Ale recently reporting that nearly 1,300 shut last year. Wetherspoon’s new target came as the firm reported bumper half-year results, with revenues up 8.2% to £991million and profits leaping from £4.6million to £36millon.
Tim Martin, founder and chairman of JD Wetherspoon, said the key to its success was being a “jack of all trades”. He told The Mirror : “One of the things we do, for example, is selling almost one million coffees a week. And no pub company opened for breakfast before we did it.”
It has also invested heavily in its existing pubs, many of which are old and sometimes historic buildings in town and city centres. But recent openings have included at Heathrow Airport, the O2 concert venue in London, a shopping centre in Leeds, and a holiday park in North Yorkshire.
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Others have been at Hull University and a second at Newcastle University, despite reports that today's students drink less. Mr Martin said: “I think the idea that the younger generation are radically different should be taken with a pinch of salt. I hope they revert to drinking a pint of Abbot a night like I do.”
He earlier told LBC’s Nick Ferrari at Breakfast show that it had previously expanded too quickly. He said: “I think if we’ve made a mistake in the last 15 years, we’ve probably put a couple of pubs close to each other in medium-sized towns. A lot of cases we’ve reverted to one, and sometimes expanding the size of the one that remains. So I wish I could have saved myself £100million or so if I’d known that 10 years ago, but never mind.”
Wetherspoon today announced it had awarded £21.2million of bonuses and free shares to employees, of whom 89.6% was to staff in pubs. Workers have shared £524million in the same way since 2007, the firm said.
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