Hear from our tenants

Tony Larsen
The Bowler, Clerkenwell
Brakspear tenant since: January 2010

"This is the first pub for my business partners Mat, Rob and myself. When we viewed The Bowler with our BDM, John O'Flaherty, we knew straight away that it was right for us and were keen to move quickly on it.

"The next step was another meeting with John and Tom Davies, the Commercial Director, and then we went back to them with business plans. They were very helpful and understanding and we always felt there was a very personal touch about the company. The whole process from first seeing the pub to signing a tenancy agreement has only taken five weeks, which we're pretty impressed with.

"Brakspear have been very flexible, for example, they've given us a longer time before reopening to allow us to install a new open kitchen. They respond quickly when we need help - for example, we set off the fire alarm in the pub by mistake, phoned the Henley head office and within an hour the electrician had phoned us with instructions on disabling it. It's an impressive level of service when you consider that Brakspear has 145 pubs - some much smaller companies would struggle to match it."

"We are very much looking forward to working with them over the coming years."

Curly & Jean Chandler
The Rainbow, Middle Assendon, Henley-on-Thames
Brakspear tenant since: 1989

"We've just celebrated 20 years with Brakspear and they've been good ones. A good pub company is one that lets you get on with running your pub the way you think best but is there to offer advice if you need it, and help to get through any difficult patches. That's just how Brakspear approaches its pubs, and it has suited us well, we've always felt we could call our BDM, or speak to someone at the Henley office, and they'd make an effort to sort out whatever we needed.

"We feel more as though we're part of a big family than a pubco, especially since Mickey and Tom Davies have got involved - they've turned it back into a family-run company again, as it was when we first joined it. "