Fuller’s may be defined by its beers, but it is its food that is increasingly attracting customers to its pubs and spurring the company to set the pace for change in an industry that is currently shaking off the shackles of financial stagnation. Mike Berry talks to chief executive Simon Emeny.
Simon Emeny is a restless man, which sounds strange when describing someone who has worked at the same company for almost 20 years.
Eighteen months into his stint as chief executive at London-based brewer and pub operator Fuller’s, Emeny is succeeding in keeping the business moving forward. He may be settled in the familiar surrounds of the company’s famous Thames-side brewery in Chiswick, but complacency isn’t a word he recognises.
“I don’t struggle to motivate myself. The test is to challenge yourself and I feel that’s something I do as a person. After 19 years here you have to do that and not get complacent,” he says.
“I have to pinch myself sometimes and understand what a big honour this is — to be the first non-family member CEO of a business that’s been around for 170 years. I feel proud of that and I’ve been given the chance to do new and different things that we might not have done in the past.”
Those new ventures include buying a cider maker and majority stake in a cider-pizza restaurant, opening a stand-alone coffee shop, setting up a premium drinks import business, brewing the company’s own craft lager and accelerating its high-profile openings programme.
“I think, culturally, the business recognises that it can never stand still, and that we need to continually evolve,” Emeny says. “What quite often happens is that companies get stuck in a rut, do the same thing time and time again with mediocre results and then have to have some major revolution to try to change things. That isn’t how we run the business.”
Emeny joined Fuller’s in 1996, initially to run its managed pubs. He joined the main board in 1998 and was promoted to managing director of Fuller’s Inns in 2006. He subsequently became group managing director in 2010 and took the top job in July 2013.
We meet at the Tap on the Line, which sits adjacent to Kew Gardens underground station, and was reopened in 2013 after a six-figure refurbishment project. It looks in keeping with many other Fuller’s pubs, sympathetically restored and given a vintage feel with a modern edge.
Fuller’s new openings programme has been incredibly successful. Iconic pubs have been added to its stable, such as the Harp in Covent Garden, the Parcel Yard at King’s Cross station and the Admiralty on Trafalgar Square. The company also opened London’s Pride, its pub at Heathrow Terminal 2. Emeny reveals that — in the week before we meet — none of company’s top five pubs in terms of turnover were in the business five years ago. “That’s quite something and a sign of how much we have evolved,” he says.
He now wants the company to be as famous for its food as it is for its beer. While the beer company defines “who we are and what we do”, the quality of its food is a reason why lots of customers are attracted to its pubs.
“That’s the biggest change we’ve seen during the past decade — the reputation and quality of our food,” he says. “It’s a journey you never finish. We are continually trying to find ways of improving and developing the offer.”
Another area where Fuller’s is determined to win is customer service. The company can’t compete on scale with some of its bigger managed competitors, but Emeny believes Fuller’s can win the race when it comes to delivering consistently great service.
“The overarching thing customers expect when they come to one of our pubs is warm hospitality and a fantastic atmosphere. Underpinning that, they expect great engagement with our staff. They don’t want to be served by robots that efficiently process their order,” he says.
“We’re quite good at fixing things that are hard wired into the business; making sure a pub is refurbished on a regular cycle, or complies with health and safety legislation or licensing laws.
“A lot of those things don’t matter to customers, they take that as a given. The thing they consistently want is great service.”
Fuller’s, of course, doesn’t just run managed pubs. It has an approximately 200-strong tenanted pub estate and was last year recognised as Best Tenanted Pub Company at the Publican Awards. Emeny insists the company’s relationship with its tenants is “healthy” and that they benefit from the various initiatives introduced in the managed estate.
“Our tenants are very keen to adopt the things that have made our managed pubs so successful and all the benefits they bring. They are our brand ambassadors so they have to uphold the values that I and the business have — after all they’ve got our name above the door,” he says.
The performance of the tenanted estate has held up well during what has been a difficult period for the sector. Emeny is positive the industry is emerging from that period which, he says, makes it all the more baffling why the Government has chosen to intervene with the new pubs code and market rent-only legislation.
Fuller’s will not be affected because it falls below the current 500-pub threshold, but Emeny’s concerns are for the wider sector.
“There has to be an incentive for the pubco to invest. If that incentive is removed you will see large swathes of pubs that aren’t supported, and my concern would be that there will be more pub closures,” he says.
“This is happening at a time when it seems the industry is on the up. We’re seeing tenant default rates fall and pubcos investing in their pubs, so it’s very disappointing that just as we’re coming out of a slump, this legislation is coming in. I don’t think it will benefit customers in the end. You will see thousands of pubs underinvested and a lot closing down.”
On more positive interventions, Emeny is hoping for a further cut in beer duty in next month’s Budget to help bolster recent positive beer sales. He wants greater action on reducing the levels of tax the industry pays into the Treasury coffers. “This industry is grossly overtaxed — in the past financial year, something like 39% of our total revenues went in various forms of taxation,” he says.
As the company enters its 170th year of trading, Emeny’s unceasing journey to make Fuller’s the market leader continues. The business is in good shape, led by a man who wants to achieve success by “doing things the right way”. Spurs fan Emeny likens his challenge to trying to win the league by playing good football. “Just juggernauting our way to the top isn’t our style,” he maintains.
