This is one of the questions I am currently exploring through Gastropub 2026 – Project.
The project started as an L&F CG concept in 2019 under the working idea *The Gastropub Experience*. The early ambition was to build an international franchise around local food, local drinks, strong young culinary talent, technology and places that reflected the city they were in.
I am revisiting the idea in 2026, but starting from a different question.
The first job is not to build a franchise. It is to find out whether one gastropub can become a genuinely good, profitable and repeatable operating model.
Current working hypothesis
Pub accessibility + restaurant quality + local identity.
The idea is a premium-casual place people can use frequently, but still choose deliberately: a short and robust food menu, a strong beverage programme, local products where they improve the experience, and a design language that makes each location feel connected to its city rather than copied into it.
Technology should mostly sit behind the experience — helping with forecasting, staffing, purchasing, inventory, guest insight and learning — rather than becoming the experience itself.
What I am exploring
The first location should work as both a restaurant and a learning machine.
Before committing to a permanent site, the plan is to test parts of the concept through live pilot evenings and use them to learn about willingness to pay, menu architecture, beverage mix, service time, guest response and repeat intent.
At the same time, I am comparing Oslo, Bergen, Trondheim and Stavanger as possible first markets. The relevant question is not which city sounds most attractive, but where demand, tourism, local food and drink identity, rent, talent and operating conditions can support the strongest unit economics.
What would have to be true
A first unit should be able to reach healthy profitability without depending on founder heroics, unusually cheap rent or fine-dining prices.
The menu, purchasing, service, training, technology and financial reporting should become teachable enough to turn into a real operating playbook.
And the concept should be able to travel without becoming generic: the operating system should repeat, while the local expression should not.
What I currently think
The most interesting asset may not ultimately be the first restaurant itself. It may be the combination of brand, operating model, data and playbook that the first restaurant helps us prove.
That is why I currently see the first Gastropub as a flagship and prototype rather than the first node in a pre-decided franchise chain.
If the model works, later options could include owned units, joint ventures, management agreements or franchise. I do not think that decision should be made before the operating evidence exists.
What I still do not know
Which city gives the concept the best first conditions? What price and volume combination can support both quality and repeat use? How local can sourcing and identity become before complexity begins to damage margins? Can the business attract a strong enough operating partner? And, most importantly, can a gastropub be both locally distinctive and operationally repeatable?
Those are the questions the project is now designed to answer.