Peach secures £9.5m NatWest refinance, eyes path to £35m turnover: Peach Pub Company, co-founded by Lee Cash and Hamish Stoddart, is a step closer to being the 22-strong, £35m pub business it set out to become after securing £9.5m from NatWest in refinance and acquisition facilities. The funding provides a fillip to an already strong performance so far this year where the independent gastro-pub group turned in year-to-date sales growth 6% above the market. “We are rolling along very nicely so far this year, with strong like-for-likes and 14 out of our 17 pubs in like-for-like growth,” said Joe Garthwaite, Peach finance director. “We continue to over-trade on key events, like bank holidays, and are confident performance will stay that way over the summer – the immediate future’s looking peachy. We’ve been working hard behind the scenes for a while now to build long-term growth and particularly to secure the extra finance we need to take us to the next stage. We’re pleased to say that we’ve got it from the experienced team at NatWest who worked very hard to understand our company so they could tailor their support to suit our business and its needs really well. We are very selective about the pubs we add to the Peach family as it grows and the revolving credit facility from NatWest means we can move quickly when our dream pubs become available.” Peach started 15 years ago when Cash and Stoddart bought The Rose and Crown in Warwick. Since 2005, the business has been banked by NatWest, supporting growth pub acquisition and new acquisitions such as The High Field in Edgbaston, a star performer which turns over £40,000 a week. The first new venture the funding is supporting is a boutique hotel next door to The High Field, The High Field Town House, which opens in early June. Nick Randle, relationship director, corporate and commercial, NatWest, added: “We are delighted to be able to support this successful local pub company with their ambitions and look forward to being part of their exciting growth.” Stoddart is presenting at the Propel summer conference on Thursday, 7 July at the Oxford Belfry. He will set out progress at the 17-strong pub company, its USPs, unique ‘partnership’ business model, team and site development, and plans for the future. Multi-site operators can book up to two free place by emailing Jo Charity on jo.charity@propelinfo.com

Costa Coffee launches Android Pay today: Costa Coffee will offer customers the ability to pay for their food and drink with their Android phone from today. The launch of Android Pay in Costa’s UK stores provides an additional payment method that will help increase the speed of transactions and give mobile payment options to almost the whole UK phone market. To ensure customers safety and security, no actual card numbers are stored on the device when a credit or debit card is added to Android Pay.Instead a virtual account number represents account information so that customers' card details stay safe. Jon Fisher, head of mobile and loyalty at Costa, said: “Costa is committed to finding new and innovative ways to improve the customer experience. The decision to work with Google to roll out Android Pay was an obvious choice. We currently provide other contactless payment methods across the majority of our UK stores, so offering Android Pay will give customers even more choice when it comes to payment.” Spencer Spinnell, director of business development at Google, added: “We want to make in-store payments simpler for everyone, so we’ve worked with Costa to enable Android Pay in the majority of their UK locations. This adds to the list of almost 460,000 contactless payment terminals in the UK where people can seamlessly tap and pay with their Android phones.” Android Pay is easy to set up and users will continue to receive all of the rewards and benefits offered by credit and debit cards.