The Bagle Brook is coming back. The Baglan pub and restaurant, shut since 10 September, has turned up on the opening list of a new company that is taking on 57 of Whitbread’s old restaurants.
Common Table lists it as “Port Talbot – Bagle Brook Plus”, Baglan Road, with opening hours to be announced. It is one of six Welsh venues on its Wales page, and the only one in Swansea Bay.
Cllr Josh Tuck, one of the three Baglan councillors who fought the closure, wrote on Facebook that he had been told the Brook would “hopefully be re-opening in January”. He said he had been “sworn to secrecy” on the rest.
It is understood renovation work is already under way inside the building, with a phased reopening planned rather than a single launch day.
Rodeo Doughnuts founder behind the 57-site Whitbread deal
Common Table told trade magazine The Caterer last month that it is buying one Premier Inn and 57 former Beefeater, Brewers Fayre and Cookhouse sites, for a price neither side has disclosed. It says the deal creates 700 new jobs on top of staff transferring from Whitbread.
The company is led by Thomas Anderson, who founded Rodeo Doughnuts, a coffee and bakery chain with 15 sites in London and Manchester. It is backed by Rove360, a consultancy staffed by former senior Whitbread managers.
The sites will “remain restaurants at heart”, Common Table says, serving an all-day food and drink menu to hotel guests and locals, with Rodeo coffee alongside. The first relaunches are due from the middle of this month.
Mr Anderson said the priority was “to get the sites back open and trading as soon as possible”. He said: “We’re building an entrepreneurial business with a local feel, where our teams are empowered to make decisions and shape each venue around the people and communities it serves.”
The only one of Swansea Bay’s four Whitbread restaurants on the list
Whitbread named four local restaurants for closure in May, when it announced it was leaving the restaurant trade altogether and cutting up to 3,800 jobs. The Bagle Brook is the only one with a new operator in place.
The Waterfront Beefeater in SA1 is still on the market as a leasehold. Christie & Co has offers invited rather than a price.
In Llanelli, the Sandpiper is being sold together with the Premier Inn beside it, and Swansea Vale in Llansamlet is being turned into an in-house restaurant for its hotel.
The other Welsh sites on Common Table’s list are at Abergavenny, Barry Island, Colwyn Bay, Newport and Rhyl.
From an £850,000 listing in July to a new name in October
Whitbread put the Bagle Brook up for sale in July at £850,000 for the freehold. Christie & Co marketed it as a turnkey restaurant with about 160 covers, a garden and car parking, beside the 68-room Premier Inn off junction 41.
Neither company has said whether Common Table bought that freehold or has taken the site on other terms. Nor has either said whether the team who worked there until September are among the staff transferring.
Cllr Tuck, Cllr Carol Clement-Williams and Cllr Susanne Renkes wrote to Whitbread’s chief executive in May asking the company to think again. When the listing appeared they urged any buyer to keep the staff on, “because they really make the Bagle Brook what it is”.
Stephen Kinnock, the Aberafan Maesteg MP and Secretary of State for Wales, welcomed the news on Facebook. “The Brook is so much more than a pub or restaurant, it is a real community hub for people to meet up, have some food and drinks, and share time together,” he said.
He had written to Whitbread’s chief executive in May warning that losing the pub would be “a serious blow” to the people who worked there and to the wider local economy.
The Bagle Brook opened in 1979 and served its last meals as a Beefeater on 10 September. That was the day the brand itself was retired, three days after Brewers Fayre.
Common Table is not the only buyer picking through what Whitbread left. Hospitality group Queensway took 53 Brewers Fayre and Beefeater sites in August, and Mitchells and Butlers seven in June for conversion to Miller and Carter and Toby Carvery.
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