THEY are pubs with no Sky Sports and no fruit machines, where you can see the beer being brewed on the premises.

It sounds the opposite of everything the industry was doing a few years ago. Yet it was the idea behind Brewhouse & Kitchen, which is currently planning its 19th pub.

“I’m probably a bit of a moralist in terms of pubs,” said Kris Gumbrell, Bournemouth-based executive chairman of the business.

He’s against gambling in pubs and, although he loves sport, he doesn’t care to have it televised in his premises.

“I’m not prepared to fill my pub by paying over the odds to show football and then destroy the atmosphere in the pub for other people who are not interested in football,” he said.

Mr Gumbrell, 50, went to what was then Dorset Institute of Higher Education, before 20 years working for three big players in the pub scene. He left to co-found Brewhouse & Kitchen as a “disruptive” force in the industry.

“I kind of came across brew pubs. I thought, this is an interesting idea,” he said.

The first pub was in Portsmouth. In five years, the business has raised around £23million in investment and created around 300 jobs.

Mr Gumbrell was keen to open in Bournemouth and snapped up the derelict Malt & Hops in his own area, Southbourne. Some were sceptical about reviving it as a pub, but it has been one of the company’s biggest successes.

Since then, the company has bought the former Rising Sun in Poole and opened in the former Branksome Arms at the Triangle, where he met the Daily Echo.

“We had so many challenges with this building but I think we’ve done a really good job with something that was completely dead,” he said.

“It wasn’t without battles with planning and listed building people to make them see the reasons we need to move some fireplaces just to make it operationally workable. Bournemouth’s always going to have that challenge of being able to deal with planners who aren’t commercially aware.”

As well as beers created on the premises, the pubs emphasise family dining, with more than half of visitors coming in for food.

Customers can buy tickets for beer masterclasses or a Brewery Experience Day, where they brew a beer and can come back a fortnight later to try it. “You come out knowing pretty much everybody in the pub that day,” said Mr Gumbrell.

Mr Gumbrell was raised in the industry, collecting glasses and picking up skittles for extra pocket money in the working men’s clubs his mother managed.

Now, with a 10-year-old daughter who is fascinated by the hospitality business, he is keen to interest more people in the industry. He is leading an industry effort to have a level four apprenticeship in brewing up and running next year.

“The pub sector needs to find a way of making itself interesting for young people,” he said.

Mr Gumbrell’s last job for a big pub company was as operations director with Greene King, where he could see the industry was changing. “They really thought they had the industry under control and I could just sense that they didn’t,” he added. “The world is about choice and people want things that are differentiated.

“There are too many pubs out there who think ‘If I just switch the football on or buy a karaoke, I’ve done my job’. You’ve got to be more dynamic and creative.

“Guests are sharp. We talk to them a lot. We always take the time to find out whether people are happy.”

The business is owned by around 200 “very supportive” private shareholders, and he isn’t in any hurry to sell out and exit.

“I never built this to sell it. I built this business to run it and to grow it,” he said.

“My mission isn’t to build the biggest business I can build. I’m interested in building the best business I can build.”