Licensing a pub is licensing a kitchen you cannot see.
The Farmer’s Dog works because of an all-British sourcing rule, a hundred and forty staff and a landlord who is there. Two of those three do not travel, and the one that does is the one most likely to be quietly dropped in year two.
What would actually be licensed, and what would not.
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The sourcing rule travels. It is the only thing that does.
Every ingredient from these islands is a rule that can be written down, audited and enforced from a distance. It costs a licensee eight to fourteen per cent on food cost and it is verifiable from invoices without setting foot in the building.
It is also the only part of the proposition a customer can check, which makes it the only part worth protecting.
License the rule, not the recipes.
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The kitchen does not travel.
A menu is a set of instructions carried out by people you did not hire, at a standard you cannot see, on a Tuesday when it is quiet. Every pub group in Britain has discovered this and most of them have responded by simplifying the food until it can survive anybody.
That works and it produces a pub that is fine. Fine is not what this is.
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And the landlord definitely does not travel.
The single largest factor in whether a pub is any good is whether the person running it is in it. A franchise model selects for people with capital, and capital and presence are not the same quality and are frequently opposites.
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So the honest structure is a licence with a very short leash.
Three-year term, one two-year renewal negotiated fresh. Quarterly invoice audits on the sourcing rule. Immediate termination for a sourcing breach with no cure period. Ninety-day sell-off, not eighteen months. And a cap of about six sites, because seven is where somebody starts talking about a central kitchen.
The clause that decides a licence is the sell-off period, and it is the one nobody reads.
Three ways of doing it.
| Franchise | Licence | Managed | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Capital required from us | None | None | All of it |
| Control of the food | Contractual | Contractual | Total |
| Speed of rollout | Fast | Fast | Very slow |
| Sourcing rule enforceable | |||
| Kitchen standard enforceable | |||
| Damage if it goes wrong | Severe | Severe | Contained |
| What we would actually do |
What a licensee would have to accept.
| Clause | Term |
|---|---|
| Sourcing | Every ingredient from these islands, audited quarterly from invoices |
| Audit | Four unannounced visits a year, at our cost |
| Term | Three years, one renewal of two, negotiated fresh |
| Sell-off on termination | 90 days. Not 18 months |
| Breach of sourcing | Immediate termination, no cure period |
| Menu approval | Every dish, in writing, before it goes on |
| Suppliers | Yours, not ours, and no commission to us from any of them |
| Sites | Capped at six across the whole licence |
| Central production | Prohibited entirely |
| Named operator | On site, and named in the agreement |
A pub licence is the fastest way to turn a good pub into a chain of adequate ones, and the sourcing rule is the only part of it robust enough to survive the journey. The defensible version is six sites, three-year terms, ninety-day sell-off and unannounced invoice audits. The indefensible version is the one that pays better, and it is the one that gets offered.
None of this is available
There is no franchise, no licence and no scheme. This page documents what the terms would have to be if there ever were one, because the question is asked often enough to be worth answering in public.
The pub licence, at a glance.
Six sites, capped
Seven is where a central kitchen appears.
Three-year term
One renewal, negotiated fresh.
90-day sell-off
The clause that actually decides it.
Not available
This is documentation, not an offer.
The bigger version of the question.
What the name is worth and what it costs to get back.
