Independent pub chain Yates Brothers Wine Lodges yesterday served up an impressive set of results for 1997 and announced plans for further expansion.
The rapidly expanding company wants to have 200 pubs and bars by 2000, and will open another 25 outlets this year, in addition to the 28 opened last year.
Bolton-based Yates currently has 72 pubs and chairman Gerry Macleod, who is retiring this year, said: “Our brand franchise now stretches from the South of England to Wales and Scotland.”
Newcastle and Liverpool are among the cities in which Yates Wine Lodges are due to open this year, the company said.
Directors put the rapid growth down to giving customers good service and prices on two of its most popular pints that do not vary from region to region. A pint of Boddingtons or Carling Black Label costs the same in central London as in Aberdeen.
The idea has been so successful that Yates now plans to sell some of its wine and soft drinks in the same way.
In 1997/98, that helped Yates to achieve one of the best average weekly turnovers of any pub chain and the title “Pub Retail Brand of the Year” in March.
Each pub takes around £19,000 per week, which in 1997/98 translated into a pre-tax profit of £13.6m, up nearly a third on the 1996 figure of £10.5m.
That came on the back of sales in the year to March 29 worth #97.8 million, up from £75.7m, and the company is hiking the total dividend up 20% to 3.45p.
McLeod said the result was “particularly pleasing” as it was achieved “despite competitive market conditions”. Trading at Watling Street Inns, its traditional themed pubs, was also on the up, he said.
Yates Wine Lodges have changed radically since the beginning of the decade, new managing director George Marcall acknowledged.
Before that, many of its Northern bars had a reputation for being “spit and sawdust places, populated with less desirable characters including ladies of the night,” he said.
Marcall said much of the credit for the 114-year-old company’s transformation was due to the outgoing chairman, Peter Dickson, founder Peter Yates’ great-grandson.
It was he who took the decision to revamp the chain at the beginning of the decade which had led to the company’s current success, Marcall said.
But Marcall added that some of the old Yates tradition lived on in the smallest of the group’s brands, the Blob Shops – nine no-nonsense drinking halls which are popular with students.
EGi News 10/06/98
