Nightcap’s recent acquisition of cocktail bar chain Dirty Martini was “quite uncomplicated” according to chief executive Sarah Willingham, who spoke at MCA’s Pub Conference.
The multi-millionaire investor and entrepreneur described why the late-night bar operator’s most recent addition was so complementary to her listed platform.
It was announced earlier this month that Nightcap had acquired Dirty Martini’s 10-bar estate and Tuttons Brasserie in a £4.65m pre-pack deal.
Willingham said aside from Dirty Martini’s battered balance sheet, the estate was made up of strong revenue-generating businesses.
“It’s a lovely acquisition for us because if I deleted the name across the top of the P&L I wouldn’t know it wasn’t one of ours,” she said. “And that’s a really compelling reason.
“They operate fundamentally the business model that lies underneath all of our different brands. It’s not all of them, but most of the estate is the same and that makes it very easy to slot in.”
A recent structural reorganisation at Nightcap made the Dirty Martini acquisition a much smoother ride, Willingham said.
She explained how Nightcap dissolved the subsidiary level and brought everything under a single group, which was “very difficult” – but meant when acquisition opportunities like Dirty Martini come along, “we can bolt it on much easier”.
“You can’t just keep bolting on lots and lots of different businesses with different cultures, different systems, you’ll likely never see any synergies across the group.
Willingham said that it was also beneficial to already have sites in the same places as Dirty Martini. The brand’s locations in Bristol, Birmingham and Cardiff for example are all within 100 metres of one of Nightcap’s, she explained. “We know them really, really well”.
“It’s a very well invested real estate, the people who had it before were amazing at property and you can tell. There are slightly different customers and a slightly different way of doing the marketing, but fundamentally, they’re really similar businesses”.
She surmised that these particularities are what made the estate “quite uncomplicated to buy”.
“It was an asset repack, so we didn’t take on all of the central overheads. I think if we’d have not had that structure, we wouldn’t have been able to do it” Willingham added.
“I’m sure a lot is still going to come out of the woodwork by the way, because it was only a week ago”.
