Top Pub business changes hands

SOLD: The Greytown Hotel, also known as the Top Pub. PHOTO/FILE

Wairarapa's licensing trust has sold Greytown's Top Pub business.

Trust House has sold the Greytown Hotel, better known as the Top Pub, but will remain as landlord of the 156-year-old Victorian property.

Chief executive Allan Pollard said the business had been sold but not the land and buildings.

The business was handed over officially yesterday to "a lovely Irish couple", Tony and Ursula Murphy, who had previously run pubs in the Hutt. It was more advantageous for the trust to use an owner-operator model for the hotel and pub, he said, and it was more sustainable due to the lower costs.

"Over the last few years, there are things that have really hurt the pub game, the smokefree act, the increased cost of compliance, the new drink-driving laws. We just see having a tenant there as more of a sustainable business model."

In the last couple of years Trust House has let go several businesses. It sold the Greytown Four Square after it failed to sell as a going concern, and closed The Homestead Restaurant, The Homestead Bar and Greytown Wines and Spirits.

Mr Pollard said it was not a trend. "We will always be in the pub business." The Farriers Bar and Restaurant and the Kuripuni Sports Bar Tavern were going well but with smaller businesses like the Top Pub it was better to put an owner-operator in. The trust has owned the hotel since 2008.