Hertfordshire based pub company Oakman Inns and Restaurants has acquired the freehold of its sixth site for £1.6m. At the same time it has also expressed its plans to sell some of its stake in the British Larder in Suffolk.
Based in Tring at one its pubs, Oakman Inns has bought the Crown and Thistle in Abingdon-on-Thames and now plans to close the pub in January for a full refurbishment costing £1.4m. Once completed it will have more of a modern feel and comprise a restaurant and two bars, as well as 19 bedrooms. It joins the portfolio of Oakman’s five other core pubs- the Akeman in Tring, the Old Post Office in Wallingford, the Red Lion in Water End, the Kings Arms in Berkhamsted and the Blue Boar in Witney. They are also the majority shareholders at the British Larder in Suffolf.
Oakman Inns has had a strong start to this financial year, with like-for-like sales growth of nearly 22% for the eighteen weeks ending 5 August 2012. The British larder saw a growth of 15% over the same eighteen-week period. However, Oakman announced it was planning to sell part of its stake in the company to allow them to concentrate on its core pub estate. According to Chief executive Peter Borg-Neal expanding the company and focusing on the British Larder at the same time was becoming hard.