UK hospitality firm get new procurement chief to build business infrastructure

A leading UK pub and hospitality firm, Stonegate, has appointed David Loseby procurement director, who will oversee the massive task of putting in place the essential pillars of procurement.

In August last year, Stonegate acquired 333 pubs from Mitchells & Butlers for AUD$570 million. Unfortunately, they came without a business infrastructure to support them. 

Hired just before Christmas, Loseby has until the end of July to complete the huge task.

“The brief that I had when parachuted in was to procure a new IT and till system, build a procurement team, and then put in place a whole new supply chain and all the contracts necessary to run this entire group,” he told SM.

“We’re on track at the moment, but there have been some long hours and tough challenges along the way,” he said.

Since joining, Loseby has put together an eight-strong procurement team and bought all the IT and till systems, which are now being installed. The team has also redesigned supply chains and put in place a category management system to control spending of more than AUD$152 million.

It was vital that the pubs remained open during the move from one owner to another, so transitional agreements were put in place with existing suppliers.

Another challenge is that the procurement team has not been given sight of previous commercial arrangements with vendors, which means it has been unable to assess whether Stonegate has saved money with its new contracts. Instead its success is being assessed using business measures such as gross margins and profitability.

Testament to procurement’s achievements so far is that within a month of joining, Loseby was invited to join the executive board of Stonegate, which is owned by TDR Capital.

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