MARSTON’S OPENS NEW HQ

All head office employees of pub group Marston’s have moved to their new headquarters in Wolverhampton.

St John’sHouse is located in St John’sSquare.

Marston’sHouse is now just the headquarters for the CarlsbergMarston’sbrewing joint venture.

Marston’schief executive Andrew Andrea said the new head office, where300 are based, has enabled everything to be integrated on one site

It has enabled Marston’s, which has 12,000 employees, to bring all its central facilities on to one site. Mr Andrea said that he felt it was important to bring teams together.“We areremoving the separation between head office and pubs teams and people in the training centreand making us one team,” said Mr Andrea.

“Weneededahome and this will provide that and a heart and soul for our pubs business,” he added.

The 1970s building now features abar on the training floor is quipped with exactly the same kind of pump mechanisms as the group’s pubs.

Thereisalsoatraining cellar wherepeople will be training on cellar management to ensureaperfect pint is served across the whole Marston’s estate.

“It is areally important part of our strategy.Although we sell alot of food our customers have got to be comfortable to come in and get aperfect pint,” explained Mr Andrea.

One floor houses the training and development kitchens which areall electric as part of Marston’sjourney to net zero. All the kitchens in its estate of 1,500 pubs –1,200 of which aremanaged or franchised –willhaveefficient electric kitchens within three to four years as well.

Thereare 275 desk locations in open-plan spaces across the three floors and up to 200 moreseating locations. Staffwillbeable to work from any desk with all equipped with monitors linked by wi-fi to the operating system. Each of the main meeting rooms, equipped with technology to enable people to connect from outside through Zoom or Teams, is beinggiven adifferent name related to the Marston’s estate. The boardroom is The Red Lion Room and others include The King’sHead, Queen’sHead, Pitcher and Piano and Crown.

Thereare 13 meeting rooms across St John’sHouse.

“The pandemic revealed the need for having fewer physical and morevirtual meetings. We have also developed our virtual training as well,” said Mr Andrea.

The building was bought for £2.5 million and the costs of adapting it and fitting it out totalled £6.9m. Demolition and asbestos removal work took 12 weeks to compete. Director of property Andy Kershaw has masterminded the project.