Working on the Punch line
The Fire Stables in Wimbledon Village may be only six months old, but it's already been named Gastropub of the Year by Time Out magazine. The pub is just one of half-a-dozen belonging to Punch DevCo, a division of Punch Retail (Managed).
Based primarily in London, the group's bars, restaurants and gastropubs started out with a bar called Cane in West Hampstead, which opened in July 2000. The emphasis here is on drink, which accounts for 95% of sales. Two months later, the Lots Road Pub & Dining Room in Chelsea opened with its 60-seat dining area, followed in November by the Paxton's Head pub in Knightsbridge with an upstairs 36-seat restaurant called Eat Canteen. The 50-seat Marylebone Bar & Kitchen opened in April.
The most recent addition to DevCo's London portfolio is the Coach in Greenwich Market, which opened this month and has a covered outside area for year-round dining. The Grade II-listed Victorian pub, the Prince Alfred, on Formosa Street in Maida Vale, is due to open in August.
The group's first venture outside London is the Weyside in Guildford, Surrey, which opened earlier this month with a 34-seat restaurant. It used to be a pub called the Jolly Farmer, located on the River Wey, but the previously large and dark venue has been transformed into a spacious open-plan pub-cum-dining room with an outside dining terrace for 150 covers.
Punch DevCo does not brand its establishments heavily and, apart from the small chain of bars called Bar Room Bar, the look of each DevCo pub or bar is bespoke. There's a shared sense of simplicity, clean design and quality food, but no outward clues that gastropub the Fire Stables and the Lots Road Pub & Dining Room are part of the same group. The sleek, sexy Cane bar ostensibly has little in common with the restored Victorian splendour of the Paxton's Head pub.
"The objective wasn't consciously to avoid doing a chain," explains DevCo's operations director Peter Myers, "but that we should do each property as it came up and as we thought it should look."
Fresh, high-quality food was another priority. Sales of food currently account for 40-45% of turnover. At Lots Road, weekly food sales are £4,500-£5,000. "There was an opportunity to put fresh food into pubs, to do gastropubs, but do them in a way that is one-off," says DevCo's managing director, Jo Cumming.
Simplicity has been a watchword for the group's food offering, with that message going out to the chefs. "We aim to do simple things well, whether it's the design, the drinks or the food," says Cumming.
Chefs are an important element in the equation. The Fire Stables' head chef is Frances McKellar, who was previously chef at the Kennington Lane restaurant in south London and who has worked in Michelin-starred restaurants such as Le Manoir Aux Quat'Saisons. Head chef at Lots Road Pub & Dining Room is South African-born Tullishe Le Roux, who worked as a chef de partie at L'Escargot.
Although the food at Cane and Eat Canteen has received mixed reviews, the gastro-pubs seem to get it right. Menus are brief and seasonal and change daily. Where space allows, open kitchens are featured.
"The chefs are recruited individually. We meet them, decide whether we like them and, just as importantly, whether they like us, and then they cook a meal. If their food is fantastic and their menu is great, then that's what they're employed for. They're employed for being chefs as opposed to kitchen managers," says Myers.
That said, if the chefs are interested in learning how to run the business, they get the opportunity to do so rather than just being stuck in the kitchen, he says.
Cumming believes that "a lot of people want to work in this kind of environment. They have an awful lot of freedom and they get huge input into the butchers and suppliers we use."
Global gastropub domination is not on the cards, however. "Probably, we will only ever do 10 places like this," says Cumming. "The limit will come when we are no longer able to find the right people. Because if we can't get great chefs, then we won't do it."
In addition to the openings this month, before the year is out DevCo will also open the Victoria & Albert gastropub, just a stone's throw from Edinburgh Castle. "I think Edinburgh is crying out for that kind of dining as well," says Cumming.
Next year, the group has eight new projects planned, although they won't necessarily be gastropubs. "We have another couple of bars and a couple of pubs that are in really good locations. On the whole, though, I think we will stick to urban areas. I don't think we're ready to do rural gastropubs. That's already been done incredibly well," says Cumming.
Yet, despite early success, the group remains resistant to obvious branding. "The one thing we said we would avoid doing is to repeat a success," Cumming says. "That's actually incredibly difficult to do. Having done it once and done it successfully, the temptation is to repeat it."
Punch DevCo: a brief history
Punch DevCo was set up as a division of Punch Retail (Managed) in April 2000. Back in autumn 1999, Punch bought the Allied estate, including about 6,000 pubs, of which 4,000 were leased. Of this, about 1,100 became the Punch Retail (Managed) group.
Karen Jones was then hired as chief executive of Punch Retail. Jones was previously with the Pelican Group, where Jo Cumming (now managing director of DevCo) and Peter Myers (DevCo's operations director) first worked together.
Jones realised that there was an opportunity to do something a little bit different with some of the pubs. She also wanted to put a group of people together to set up a fresh-food division, be it restaurants, food in bars or pubs. Jones realised she had to bring in the expertise to achieve that, and that's where Cumming and Myers came in.
DevCo has two divisions. One is the Bar Room Bar group. There are currently 10 Bar Room Bars, mainly in London, although the most recent opened in Harrogate, North Yorkshire, in May.
The other division includes Cane bar in West Hampstead, London; Lots Road Pub & Dining Room, Chelsea, London; Paxton's Head and Eat Canteen, Knightsbridge, London; the Fire Stables in Wimbledon Village; Marylebone Bar & Kitchen in Marylebone, London; and Rogano restaurant in Glasgow.
Sample menu from the Fire Stables, Wimbledon
Roast pepper farci with olive tapenade, £5.50
Thai prawns with pak choi and lime dressing, £5.50
Roast turbot with wilted spinach and beurre noisette, £14.50
Duck breast with cassoulet of flageolet beans and port jus, £13
Lime and coconut brûlée with mango, £5
Selection of home-made sorbets and ice-creams, £5
Punch DevCo
Managing director: Jo Cumming
Operations directors: Peter Myers and Ed Standring
Tel: 020 7486 9604
The Fire Stables, Wimbledon 27-29 Church Road, London SW19
Tel: 020 8946 3197
Head chef: Frances McKellar
Average number of lunches served daily: 35
Average number of dinners served daily: 45
Split of wet and food sales: 55:45
Gross profit on food: 70%
Lots Road Pub & Dining Room 114 Lots Road, London SW10
Tel: 020 7352 6645
Head chef: Tullishe Le Roux
Average number of lunches served daily: 80
Average number of dinners served daily: 35
Split of wet and food sales: 60:40
Gross profit on food: 70%
