David’s forty-eight year entrepreneurial career in the international brewing industry and licensed trade started in 1966 when he joined Courage, Barclay & Simonds in Reading, Berkshire, as a brewery management trainee. Having learnt to brew, he became the Brewer and Sales Manager at Theakston’s Brewery in Yorkshire before co-founding not only Bruce’s Brewery and the Firkin Pubs in 1979 but also the Small Independent Brewers Association (SIBA) in 1980.
Having sold Bruce’s Brewery and the Firkin Pubs for £6.6 million before the age of forty, David became a co-founder and investor in a number of start-up breweries in Paris, Brooklyn, Denver and Seattle before returning to the UK to develop his pub interests.
In 1993, David became the largest private shareholder in Grosvenor Inns PLC and, as Development and Marketing Director, was responsible for rolling out The Slug & Lettuce chain of branded bars. In December 2000, David co-founded with Clive Watson (and became Chief Executive of) The Capital Pub Company PLC, which raised over £15 million under the Enterprise Investment Scheme, was floated on AIM in 2007 and was sold in July 2011 to Greene King for an enterprise value of £93million. This provided the original Enterprise Investment Scheme investors with a threefold return on their net of tax investment.
In November 2006, David became a founding investor in the Enterprise Investment Scheme-funded Country Food & Dining group of companies of which he is Chairman. To date, this group of companies has raised over £7.5 million which has been invested in eight farm shops, providing primarily locally-sourced produce and food and drink retailing through on-site cafés.
In October 2011, again with CliveWatson, David co-founded and became Chairman of The City Pub Company (East) PLC and The City Pub Company (West) PLC which have, between them, raised £8 million under the Enterprise Investment Scheme, and currently own seventeen free houses, including three microbreweries, between Bath and Norwich via London and Brighton.
