Each year, nearly 1,500 Business Partners across the 11 key UK Family Brewers are surveyed by KAM to compile The Licensee Index (TLI). The survey is the industry-leading sentiment tracker for the UK leased and tenanted pub sector. Measuring satisfaction across several key areas, the survey delves into important topics including landlord services, marketing, support and training, with all responses impartial and anonymous. The survey is a useful measure for prospective Business Partners to gauge the strengths of a potential pub company.
2023 was another challenging year for our Business Partners, and across the hospitality sector generally. Running a pub efficiently and effectively, whilst maximising every single trade opportunity, has never been more significant.
We were delighted that Hall & Woodhouse were ranked No. 1 out of the Family Brewers in this year’s research, with our Business Partners scoring us 8.4 out of 10 when asked how they rate their pub company. We ranked 1st in 42 of the 67 questions asked and were only outside of the top 3 in 11 of those questions. Our average score across the questions asked was 7.8 out of 10, which also ranked us in first place amongst the Family Brewers.
Our strong scores this year have seen improvements from our 2022 TLI results and as always, we will take this as another learning opportunity to continue to develop the ways in which we can further support our Business Partners.
Knowledge and Training
Our ratings have improved across all four areas within knowledge and training, with the highest rating of any Family Brewer for both ‘information and advice to grow sales’ and ‘knowledge of your business needs’.
We saw an improvement in our ranking among the Family Brewers from 9th place in 2022 to 2nd place in 2023 for ‘knowledge of your customers’.
Business Development Partners
Our Business Development Partners (BDPs) continue to convey our company values and effectively support our Business Partners, with rating increases in every single one of the 13 measures. We ranked in 1st place in 11 of the 13 measures, and in the top 3 for all measures of BDP support.
Standout areas include ‘helping to reduce running costs’, ‘business controls’ (e.g. accounts) and ‘support with staff training and education’, where the greatest improvements were seen. 97% of our Business Partners surveyed said their BDP adds value to their business. Our BDP quality is now ranked 1st of all the Family Brewers, which is a fantastic result.
Business Support
We ranked in 1st place in 4 of the 6 business support measures, which were property support, credit control support, licensing support, and business rate appeal support. We’ve seen significant improvements in business rate appeal support particularly, moving from the 10th ranked Family Brewer in 2022 to the highest ranked in 2023.
Our Business Partners rated the transparency of our company above that of the Family Brewer average, with a top score of 8.2 out of 10, and the highest score we’ve achieved in 3 years.
Landlord Services
We’ve seen huge improvements in our ratings across every category in landlord services, ranking top in 3 of the 5 measures and 2nd in the other 2 measures. Most significantly, we’ve moved from 11th place to 1st place in ‘repairs’ and ‘level of investment in the pub’, and from 8th place to 1st place in ‘fair and reasonable fees / rent’.
In such a competitive market, we are very encouraged by these results.
Technology and Culture
These were new measures introduced for the 2023 TLI survey. Our ratings for technology were higher than the Family Brewer average across the 3 measures, in particular the ‘integration of technology’ where we ranked in 1st place.
We were happy to see the inclusion of the critical measures of culture and were delighted to rank in 1st place for 3 out of the 5 measures, which were ‘trustworthy’, ‘diverse and inclusive’ and ‘care for your wellbeing’. These are values of fundamental importance for H&W. We ranked 2nd of the Family Brewers for ‘overall culture’ and were 0.3 above the category average.
Recommendation of Pub Company
We achieved the second highest level of optimism shown in the survey, with a score of 8.0 out of 10, the top score being 8.3. Our score showed an encouraging increase from our 2022 score of 7.9 which ranked us in 10th place, so a huge improvement from last year.
We were delighted to achieve the highest rating of all the Family Brewers in the ‘likelihood to recommend’ category, with a strong score of 8.3, against the category average of 7.9. This is also a ranking increase of 4 places from 2022.
If you’re interested in running one of our tenanted pubs, you can view our current Business Partnership opportunities here:
https://www.hall-woodhousepartnerships.co.uk/pubs-for-rent.
We have some great opportunities across Dorset, Devon, Wiltshire, Sussex and Buckinghamshire, across a range of different pub business types, and suitable for a variety of operators.