GREENE King today said it would step up growth in its Hungry Horse and Old English Inns pub restaurant business by adding more than 200 outlets over the next five years.
The firm, which currently has 888 managed pubs, wants to boost the size of the estate by a quarter to 1,100 to benefit from long-term growth in the eating-out market.
Suffolk-based Greene King will achieve this through acquisitions and transfers from its tenanted pub estate, which it wants to cut from the current 1,584 to around 1,200 high-quality outlets.
The plans came as the group lifted pre-tax profits 4% to £123 million for the year to May 2, with revenues up 3% to a record £984.1 million.
The firm has also seen an encouraging start to the new year with trading to date "better than we were expecting", according to chief executive Rooney Anand.
