MIDLANDS pub company Marston's is targeting Scottish women with an opening programme it hopes will break up Scotland's male-dominated pubs culture.
The company reported a 4.5 per cent rise in underlying revenue to £374.3 million for the 26 weeks to April 5 with underlying pre-tax profit up 9.4 per cent to £29m.
Much of Marston's growth has come through the expansion of its estate of pub-restaurants, with its 100th outlet due to open shortly in Dumfries.
Marston's strategy focuses on attracting older consumers and women, who the firm determines as the key decision makers behind spending in many households.
Chief executive Ralph Findlay said: "Typically in many places, if you go outside Edinburgh and Glasgow it is fairly male dominated drink pubs." He said there has been "real demand" for the firm's family-friendly outlets.
Marston's opened its first pub in Scotland, the Pine Marten in Dunbar. It has since added three more - in Braehead, Forfar and Danderhall in Midlothian -and is scheduled to add a further six over the next 12 months.
Marston's expects to open around 27 new sites across the UK this year.
Despite the focus on food, Marston's said that sales at so-called wet-led pubs were starting to rebound, eased by the entry of BT into sports broadcasting with pub subscriptions from the telecoms giant priced at around a quarter of a Sky deal it said can reach upwards of £15,000 a year. This has helped bring people back to outlets hit hard by the smoking ban.
Finance director Andrew Andreas said: "We are taking share back from the home."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article