How to become a pub landlord in 2026: the four routes in, what it costs, and the sums to do before you sign

How to become a pub landlord: get a personal licence (about £171 to £219 all in), then pick your route in. Run a pub as a salaried manager, take a management or franchise deal paid on a share of turnover, take a tenancy or lease from a pub company, or buy a free house. Most first-timers go the tenancy route, which means the BII's £100 pre-entry course, a business plan checked by an independent adviser, and ingoing money that Star Pubs, for one, puts at about £10,000 for a small pub and £50,000 or more for a big one.

I'm a licensee, a tied tenant, and I get asked this more than anything else, usually by someone who's had a few in a pub they love and thinks they could run it better. Some of them could. The ones who do well are the ones who did the sums before the romance. So this guide is the steps, the real costs from published figures, and the three sums I'd make anybody do before signing.

The four ways in

The routes into running a pub, with what each needs and what you take home

Route	Money in	How you're paid	Who carries the risk
Salaried manager (managed house)	Little or none. Some live-in jobs ask for a fidelity bond	A salary, typically £35,000 to £40,000 for a general manager in this autumn's job ads	The pub company
Management or franchise agreement	Usually low	A percentage of turnover, sometimes through your own limited company, out of which you may pay the staff	Shared, and read the detail
Tied tenancy or lease	Ingoing costs, deposit, stock, fees: Star's guide is £10,000 to £50,000+	Whatever's left after rent, tied drink prices, wages and bills	You
Free house (buy the freehold or a free-of-tie lease)	Property-level money and a mortgage	Whatever's left, with no tie and no rent if you own it	You, all of it

If you've never run a pub, I'd start at the top. A year as a manager or an assistant teaches you rotas, deliveries, the cellar and the 11pm decisions with someone else's money on the line. My pub manager salary guide has 19 real job ads and the hours sum that most of them leave out. And if a "salary" turns out to be a percentage of turnover, that's the second route, not a job, so ask what the percentage paid the last person on last year's actual takings.

Step 1: the personal licence

Whichever route you take, the pub's premises licence has to name a designated premises supervisor, and the DPS has to hold a personal licence. In England and Wales that means passing the APLH exam, a £20 basic DBS check and a £37 application to the council where you live. It never needs renewing. I've done the full walkthrough, with the traps that get applications sent back, in how to get a personal licence.

If you'll serve food, you'll want a food hygiene qualification too. The government's careers profile for a publican lists a CIEH-accredited food safety qualification for pubs that do food.

Step 2: the pre-entry course

The BII's Pre-Entry Awareness Training, PEAT, is an online course of about two hours, eight modules each with a short test, covering the types of agreement, the tie, repairs, rent, business planning and what pub companies offer. The BII lists it at £100.

Is it compulsory? The Pubs Code Adjudicator says the big pub companies have to advise prospective tenants who don't have experience to do pre-entry training. The BII goes further and says the code requires it for all prospective tenants, and that the industry codes of practice for smaller pubcos do too. In practice, the pubco will ask for your certificate. Do it first, before you fall for a building. It's £100 to find out what you're signing up for.

Step 3: find the pub and go through the process

Star Pubs, Heineken's tenanted arm, publishes its process step by step, so it's the clearest example. Other pubcos run something similar under different names:

1. Apply for a pub, then a 30 to 40 minute phone call with a recruitment manager.
2. A face-to-face interview about the practical side.
3. Pre-entry training if you need it: PEAT plus Star's own online workshop.
4. A sustainable business plan, with the area manager, and at least four weeks to get independent financial advice and finalise it.
5. A second interview about that specific pub.
6. Agree heads of terms and any building work, then your solicitor reviews the legal agreement before you sign.
7. Day one: keys, codes, a stocktake, meter readings, and handing over fixtures and fittings.

If the pub company has 500 or more tied pubs, the Pubs Code applies. You'll get a letter from the Pubs Code Adjudicator about your rights, the pubco has to give you a pack of information before you sign, it has to tell you to get independent business, legal, property and rent advice, and it has to be satisfied your business plan is sustainable. I've gone through that pack line by line in before you sign a tied pub.

Step 4: tenancy or lease

A tenancy is usually shorter, cheaper to get into, mostly internal repairs, and often easy to walk away from. A lease runs ten years or more, makes every repair yours, and gives you something you can sell. For a first pub, a short tenancy with a cheap exit is the safer trade. The side-by-side table, with one pubco's published terms, is in tenancy vs lease.

What it costs to get in

Star's published rough guide is £10,000 for a smaller pub or a first-timer, £30,000 for a medium one and £50,000 or more for a large pub. That pays for the ingoing costs and working capital. Its deposit is at least three months' rent on every agreement, and it recharges its legal fees on your first rent invoice. Then add your own solicitor, a surveyor, and the first stock order. Budget for the stock valuation at handover too: you usually buy the outgoing tenant's stock at valuation on day one. How that count works, and how not to overpay for dead stock and part-empty kegs, is in taking over a pub: the first stocktake.

The single most expensive thing people skip is the surveyor. The PCA's 2026 survey found only 12% of tied tenants had advice from a qualified surveyor before taking their pub, while 95% said professional advice mattered. On a repairing lease, that gap can be the whole of your profit for years. My dilapidations guide explains why.

What you'll actually earn

Lower than most people think. Modelling from money.co.uk on BBPA cost data puts what's left in a wet-led pub at about 3p in every pound in 2026, after drink, wages, energy, rates and rent. On £5,000 a week over the bar, that's about £150 a week. That's in how much profit a pub makes.

And as a tenant, you're the manager. When I ran the BBPA's own model rent example in how pub rent is calculated, the tenant's share came out at £371 a week, which at 50 hours is £7.42 an hour. That's below the £12.71 minimum wage you'd pay someone to cover your shift. It doesn't mean nobody should do it. It means the business plan has to show you more than that, and you should be able to see where it comes from.

Three sums to do before you sign

1. Rent per pint

Divide the rent by the pints you really expect to sell. Say the rent is £30,000 a year and you'll do 800 pints a week. That's 41,600 pints a year, so 72p of every pint is rent before anything else. My numbers, illustrative. Use the pubco's own turnover forecast and see if the answer still looks comfortable at 600 pints, because quiet winters happen.

2. The tie per pint

If it's a tied pub, compare the pubco's price list with a free-trade wholesaler's. When I did it with one pubco's published April 2026 list, tied kegs ran 17p to £1.01 a pint dearer, about 62p in the middle. The rule is that you should be no worse off than free of tie, so that gap is meant to come back in a lower rent. Put the two together: on the example above, rent plus tie is about £1.34 of every pint. The working is in tied vs free-trade beer prices.

3. Your hourly rate

Take the profit the business plan says you'll make, divide by 52, then by the hours you'll really work. If it's under what you'd pay a manager, you're buying yourself a job that pays less than a job. Know that going in.

Things nobody tells you to ask for

• The last two stocktake results for the pub. A pub that ran a big deficit for the last tenant might have a line, cellar or till-button problem you're about to inherit. It's a free clue. Ask the pubco and the outgoing tenant.
• Two Fridays and a Tuesday. Sit in the pub on its busy nights and its dead one before you sign. Count the customers on the Tuesday. That's the night your rent gets paid from in February.
• The cellar. How old is the cooling, when were the lines last replaced, is there a dispense contract. A failed cellar cooler in your first summer costs more than the deposit did.
• What the pub's screens, music and Sky cost. They're fixed costs that come with the building. My guides on what Sky costs a pub and the music licence have the numbers.

The first month

Count everything on day one and again at the end of week four. The first stocktake you do yourself tells you more about the pub than the business plan did: what sells, what's dead, and whether the cellar and the tills are telling the truth. If the numbers look off, my guide on stock loss you can't explain is where to start.

Common questions

How do I become a pub landlord in the UK?

Get a personal licence, then choose a route: a salaried manager job, a management or franchise agreement paid on turnover, a tied tenancy or lease from a pub company, or buying a free house. Tenancies usually also need the BII pre-entry course and a business plan checked by an independent adviser.

How much does it cost to become a pub landlord?

For a tenancy, Star Pubs publishes a rough guide of £10,000 for a smaller pub or first-timer, £30,000 for a medium pub and £50,000 or more for a large one, with a deposit of at least three months rent. Add the personal licence (about £171 to £219), the BII PEAT course (£100), legal and surveyor fees and the opening stock.

Do you need qualifications to run a pub?

You need a personal licence to be the designated premises supervisor, which means passing the Level 2 Award for Personal Licence Holders. Pub companies usually want the BII Pre-Entry Awareness Training before a tenancy, and a food hygiene qualification is needed if you serve food.

How much does a pub landlord earn?

It varies hugely. Salaried general managers are commonly advertised at £35,000 to £40,000. Tenants keep what is left after rent, drink and costs: money.co.uk modelling on BBPA data puts that at about 3p in every pound in a wet-led pub in 2026.

What is the BII PEAT course?

Pre-Entry Awareness Training from the British Institute of Innkeeping: an online course of about two hours in eight modules covering agreements, the tie, repairs, rent and business planning. The BII lists it at £100.