“Throughout the pandemic, our teams have been incredible, providing our pub partners and operators with support, reassurance and somebody to talk to,” CEO Mark Davies explained. 

“We’re enormously proud of our company culture, the community of people we work with and the pubs we operate. 

“Our ambition is to be the number one community pub company, and next month we will rebrand to ‘Hawthorn: The Community Pub Company’, putting our purpose right at the heart of our business for everybody to see.”

Speaking to The Morning Advertiser​, Davies added he believes the rebrand reflects “who we are, what we do, and what we’re all about”. 

“We’re a big investor in communities all around the UK,” he explained. “We strongly believe in the suburban and community pub model and we want to be the number one community pub company in the UK and that’s where we intend to be. 

“We had other priorities in the initial lockdown, having not ever dealt with anything like that before, and then obviously getting the business back up and running when we bounced back on 4 July, but this is something we’ve been working on for some time– probably for the past six, nine, maybe 12 months.  

“It was always our intention to do this and the team have done a super job.” 

Pandemic performance

News that Hawthorn has formally dropped ‘Leisure’ from its company name comes days after the group revealed its half-year financial results for the six months to 30 September​.

Alongside its results, Hawthorn  announced that plans are afoot to pump £7.5m in capital expenditure into its pub estate over the next 12-months – more than double​ it’s pledge for the £3m investment outlined following its six-month results in November 2019.

According to its latest figures, net property income was £3.5m compared to £13.6m in the same six-month period in 2020 as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic. 

What’s more, Hawthorn also saw a £400,000 decline in like-for-like income excluding the impact of enforced Covid closures, which the operator attributes to dented consumer confidence after the lifting of the first national lockdown on 4 July.

Additionally, Hawthorn revealed earnings before interest, taxation, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) for the month of September stood at £1.9m – only 10% down year-on-year.