Nationwide leisure operator Greene King may be best known for its thriving pubs, but its hospitality segments including pubs with rooms and standalone food and beverage (F&B) are key to driving profits.
That was the message from Jodie Tate, managing director, destination brands and ventures, Greene King, who was in conversation with Hospitality Investor’s editor-in-chief Patrick Whyte at the Annual Hospitality Conference (AHC) 2025 in Manchester.
Pubs with rooms
“Our pubs with rooms are amongst our strongest performers in terms of profit generation and growth, even prior to us putting in more investment,” Tate said, adding: “It’s a significant part of our revenue growth and a channel we are looking to push forward.” Greene King currently has 126 hotels and pubs with rooms, representing a total of just under 3,000 keys. While the business has done a few single site acquisitions in recent years, the majority of the assets are legacy stock from the merger of Spirit Pub Company and Greene King that took place ten years ago.
In terms of growth, Tate said that the difficulties lay in having “a finite amount of capital”, and the fact that the return on that capital was often slow in coming. “The other difficulty is finding a real brand ‘bullseye’,” she said. “We know more than ever where we want to be, who we want to target. Timing that right is much harder to achieve.”
The desire to grow the pubs with rooms business is flanked by a belief in the growth of sports as a driver of community. Both fit with the “occasionality and different missions of customers today”, she said.
Macroeconomic concerns
Earlier in the year, Greene King was in the news as the group openly mulled whether it wanted to sell its hotels business or not. “We looked at the macroeconomic climate and decided to keep them, as we want them to be a key part of our strategy going forward,” she said. Greene King has recently formalised this commitment with the appointment of Vincent Madden as managing director of its Premium Ventures division, combining responsibilities for premium dining and Greene King’s Venture Hotels arm.
“We have a lot of ambitions when it comes to investing in our core of pubs and our pubs with rooms,” added Tate. “This summer’s strong performance has been helped by the very good weather in the UK, but we also feel we understand the brand and what makes the customer tick better than ever before.” She added: “We are also looking at synergies to unlock efficiencies in our model and pass them back to the customer.”
Technology and innovation
One area of interest is technology and digitalisation, which Tate sees as vital for both improving the customer experience and creating efficiencies. She previously worked in retail where, she says, the digital revolution was a little further ahead. “In our business, we still don’t have paperless back offices or till systems, while headsets are missing from some dining operations.” She did say that Greene King had recently launched its first loyalty scheme, however, which would be “key to getting closer to customers”.
Another interesting area of growth is standalone F&B, she confirmed. Greene King acquired leading BBQ smokehouse Hickory’s in 2022, which has proved an incredible driver of profits. This has included converting pubs that were no longer working into Hickory’s restaurants. “Sometimes that has meant going from a £20,000 per week pub business to a £100,000 per week success,” she said. With Hickory’s selling points including onsite cinema screens, chef stations and play areas for kids, she noted that the business had already proved an effective and growing success story, and that there would be more to come.