SmokeFree

The smokefree legislation could end up being good for business, Britain's biggest pub operator claimed today.
 
Giles Thorley, chief executive of Punch Taverns said: 'While this will undoubtedly have some impact on trading levels in some pubs, we are well prepared to optimise this and ultimately to benefit from changes to consumption patterns.'

Thorley said the market was markedly different to the English one but the group had already learned from the experience in Scotland-where he reckons fewer than 75 of Punch's 500 pubs were responsible for a 1.3% fall in like-for-like sales in the first half.
 
'The other 85% of the Scottish pubs traded at the same level or above our English pubs,' he said. 'The underperforming Scottish ones were those that either have no outside area at all or where the publican just did nothing to adapt.'
 
Originally reported in the Evening Standard