Ayrshire-based company has plans to add four or five new sites every year
By Dave Hunter
Buzzworks Holdings is set to grow its accommodation business to around 20 sites in the coming years as the company embarks on an ambitious expansion process.
Speaking to SLTN, CEO Kenny Blair said backing from investors Alchemy Partners and West Coast Capital has allowed the business to expand at a pace of around four or five new venues a year moving forward.
Sites are already being considered in the company’s Ayrshire homeland as well as across the central belt, but future locations will be considered further north and perhaps even in England.
Buzzworks – which was named Independent Multiple Operator of the Year (8+ Units) at last year’s SLTN Awards – hit the ground running with its accommodation plans this year, taking on The Nether Abbey Hotel in North Berwick (soon to be reopened as the Bass & Barrel), the Bonnie Badger in Gullane (to be rebranded as The Golf Inn), The Douglas Hotel on Arran and The South Beach Hotel in Troon. The company has also added letting rooms to its established Stewarton venue The Mill House.
The expansion into accommodation comes after Kenny undertook a management buyout of the business last year, which he had co-owned with older siblings Colin and Alison.
“Nobody can go forever, and I am the baby of the family,” he said.
“I’m actually 12 years younger than Colin and ten years younger than Alison. So it was pretty natural for it to happen like that. And they’re still about. Alison is still working in the business on a consultancy basis and I consult Colin about most things. They’ve not disappeared.
“I was already the managing director. I had been since 2015. It’s different because having worked so closely together for decades, to suddenly not having them to work so closely with you was different. But it was a natural step.”
Returning to accommodation, too, was natural, said Blair (the company had operated two hotels in the early 2000s before selling them on).
“We think of it as a natural extension of what we do on the ground floor. So rather than thinking of it as a hotel with a restaurant or a pub below, we think of it as a restaurant or a pub with rooms above. It’s just a subtle change in the thinking,” he said.
The company is currently looking at around 45 different possible sites for future acquisitions, but Blair was adamant that Buzzworks won’t be acquiring sites for the sake of it. The right locations are crucial.
“It has to have a reasonable F&B space, because you need scale,” he said.
“For a business like ours, it’s difficult to create a successful F&B operation with fewer than 100 covers. We’re really looking for the ability to have 150-plus covers.
“That’s number one. Number two is a reasonable amount of rooms, ideally twenty-plus. It comes down to condition. We’ve bought the Nether Abbey, which was in pretty good condition. That’s quite a small site but North Berwick’s a great location.
“The Bonnie Badger in Gullane was in great condition. The Kitchins had invested significantly in it.
“We’re going to add some more rooms and then just take what they’ve got there and do what we do.
“One of the things we say about our menu is that everybody in your family will find something they want to eat on our menu. That’s an absolute must-have.”
Each site that’s taken over will be closed for an extensive refurb that brings it in line with the Buzzworks estate, which is currently sitting at 24 venues employing around 900 staff.
At the senior end of the business this includes recent recruits JP McKeown as operations director, David Bell as food director and hotels veteran Robert Cook as non-exec chairman.
And as the business grows, Blair said Buzzworks has become adept at utilising all the tools at its disposal to be as efficient and profitable as possible in what continues to be a tough economy.
He said: “There’s economies of scale and procurement. The other thing we’ve got is very good margin management through the systems we have. So we know very quickly what’s happening.
“I reflect on when I was running one of my first places, and I knew what was happening because I was there all the time. I took in all the deliveries and I made sure nobody wasted anything.
“There’s still an argument for that. You don’t need fancy systems if you’re on the job all the time.
“But when you start to grow to scale you need to have good systems. We’ve been able to take advantage of that and we’ve got a great team.”
For all the changes and challenges in the industry, however, Blair insisted that the basics of hospitality haven’t changed through the decades.
“I wouldn’t say what we’ve done has dramatically changed,” he said.
“Some of the peripheral things have. When we opened Scotts in Troon social media hadn’t been invented. We just put a banner up and it was busy.”
And Kenny was adamant that hospitality continues to be a fun and rewarding industry to work in – and a great, lifelong career.
He explained: “It’s better paid than it ever was. It’s the fastest floor to boardroom industry you can possibly get involved in. It’s a meritocracy – if you do a great job you get promoted.
“It’s not easy, but I’m delighted with the amount of people we’ve got working for us that have made it a career.
“We’ve got lots of great examples of people who started with us part-time in junior roles and have worked their way up to become GMs, operations managers, head chefs and operations chefs, or moved into senior roles within our central support team.
“And as we grow, there’s more opportunities to grow with us.”
