Tom Kerridge to launch pub and butchery in Marlow

Expected to open in November, The Butcher’s Tap will trade as a butchers and bar by day before switching to a simple and (unsurprisingly) meat-led food offering in the evening.

Kerridge says the business will operate as a local pub with beers on tap and community nights.

He already runs two venues in the affluent Buckinghamshire town, his flagship The Hand and Flowers and more recently opened small plates pub-restaurant The Coach. Both are held on Greene King leases.

This project marks the first of Greene King’s joint venture concepts, a new programme for its Pub Partners division that will see the pub company and brewer “team up with the best entrepreneurs and innovators who have the courage to be bold and try.”

Tom is partnering with friend and butcher Andy Cook, who has been providing The Hand and Flower with meat for nearly a decade.

“The quality of produce that Andy brings is uncompromising, and he’s a proper butcher,” says Kerridge. “We want The Butcher’s Tap to be the heart and soul of Marlow, somewhere you can pop in every week for your usual order that we’ll have ready for you, but also a place you can have a pint and a hot pork pie straight out of the oven.”

The Butcher’s Tap’s food menu is described as a celebration of meat, with “plenty of British favourites such as braised faggots and hot-pots, homemade pies, scotch eggs and sausage rolls”.

“We aim to work with the best in the business and are thrilled that the next step of our ongoing partnership with Tom Kerridge also marks the start of what we hope will be a major development in our Pub Partners division,” says Greene King Pub Partners managing director Clive Chesser.

“We have enjoyed a long and rewarding partnership with Tom that has seen the Hand & Flowers in Marlow go from strength to strength and I cannot think of a better partner with whom to launch our joint venture programme. These concepts will see us working with innovators in the industry to come up with new ideas to expand the potential of a pub and enhance even further the role it plays in a community.”