How YOU could buy and run a pub: Read our detailed guide to the finances of running a public house, and where you can snap one up for just £100k By Toby Walne Updated: 01:53, 21 July 2024 e-mail View comments Jeremy Clarkson has invested almost £1million into buying his own pub in the Cotswolds – but how easy is it to make a profit from running a pub? The Clarkson's Farm TV presenter purchased The Windmill hostelry in five acres of the Oxfordshire Cotswolds countryside as a freehold. This means he owns the pub outright and can choose what beer is served. Only about a third of Britain's 46,800 pubs are freeholds.
The rest are run by tenant landlords and managers who are often employed by a public house chain or a brewery group that owns the property and stipulate what alcohol can be served. With pubs closing at the rate of more than one a day – 509 calling last orders last year, according to the British Beer and Pub Association – it's a financially resilient buyer who takes one on. However, any prospective buyers need not be as wealthy as the former Top Gear presenter, whose net worth is believed to be around £55million.
Websites such as Propertylink advertise freehold pubs from about £100,000, such as Ramage's Bar in Kilbirnie, Ayrshire (£98,000) and The Goat in Penygroes, Caernarfon (£100,000). Pub industry trade publication The Morning Advertiser also offers details of taverns for sale. After the initial business outlay, turning a profit from running a.