Buyer sought for remaining Orchid Pub Company sites

Ernst & Young are now seeking a buyer for the remaining Orchid Pub Company sites that were not part of the sale to Mitchells & Butlers.

The 49 outlets not included in the portfolio sale to M&B have been placed into administration, the Morning Advertiser has reported.

The sites are branded as All Inns, Do Drop Inns, Great British Carvery and Your Local Pubco. Orchid’s Oriental Restaurant Group eateries are also included, and comprise Pacific Oriental in Threadneedle Street, the Sri Nam in Cabot Square, Canary Wharf, and the Imperial City Royal Exchange Cornhill, among others.

The venues are to remain open for business and all 936 staff in their posts, while the administrators hunt for a buyer.

Companies that had been in the race to buy Orchid alongside M&B included Capital, Spirit Pub Company and Brewer Greene King.

With budgets being tighter over the past few years for consumers there has been a marked drop in discretionary spending, hitting the restaurants and pub sector hard.

“These challenging conditions have led to a decline of sales across the Orchid Pubs & Restaurants Limited portfolio and resulted in these 49 pubs and restaurants being unable to continue to operate outside of administration,” joint administrator Alan Hudson told the Morning Advertiser.

Before recent events, Orchid was owned by a trust connected to Deutsche Bank. It was left with the business after the pub group was put through the rigours of a restructuring in 2012.

M&B paid £266 million to buy the bulk of Orchid’s estate comprising 173 sites this month (June 2014), and will revamp 96 of them under its own branding over the next couple of years.

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Related information:
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