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Queensway Hospitality Group has reopened The May Tree in Helston under new ownership, converting the former Whitbread site into a "value pub" under its Queensway Inns banner. The reopening follows Whitbread's announcement that it would no longer operate 11 Cornwall sites, and it gives vendors selling into hospitality a new operator account in the south west.
The May Tree closed temporarily at the start of September, per the Falmouth Packet. Queensway acquired the site as part of a wider deal covering 53 former Whitbread restaurants across the UK. In Cornwall alone, Queensway purchased five sites: The May Tree in Helston, Carnon Inn in Carnon Downs, Loggans Moor in Hayle, Trevithick Inn in Camborne, and Liskeard Tavern in Liskeard.
The reopened pub is positioned on price. A new Facebook page for "The May Tree - Queensway Inns" announced the launch with a direct pitch: "We are BACK!! Back as part of The Queensway group. This time we are dog friendly, still super pocket friendly and with a whole new range of food and drink."
The menu is built around weekday deals. Curry Club runs on Thursdays for £12, Burger Club on Wednesdays for the same price, and Fish Fridays offer two portions of fish or scampi and chips for £15. A Sunday "Feed the Family" deal provides meals for two adults and two children for £25, while Dessert Club runs on Mondays with desserts at £2.50. The site is open for breakfast, lunch and dinner seven days a week.
For vendors, this is a greenfield account. A Whitbread-operated site typically ran on Whitbread's centralised systems. Queensway's conversion to a value-pub format means new POS, payments and workforce technology decisions are being made now, before the site's operating model hardens. The same logic applies across the other four Cornwall sites and the wider 53-site acquisition.
Dragon Collection buys closed Haverfordwest restaurant
The Dragon Collection, the Pembrokeshire hospitality group run by husband-and-wife team Lok and Jen Cheung, has bought the old Dragon and Pearl restaurant in Haverfordwest. The group now encompasses five businesses in the Tenby and Saundersfoot area: the Dragon Palace, Lokky's, Umi, the Imperial Dragon Hotel and Café No. 25.
The group's track record is unusually strong for a regional operator. The Dragon Palace won best Delivery Experience in the UK at the Golden Chopsticks in 2024 and was crowned Chinese Restaurant of the Year at the Welsh Restaurant Awards in March 2026. Lokky's was named Best Restaurant in Wales at the Golden Chopsticks Awards in 2022 and International Restaurant of the Year at the Welsh Restaurant Awards in March 2026. Umi, the group's Japanese restaurant on Tenby High Street, took Asian Restaurant of the Year at the Food Awards Wales 2025.
The Cheungs have not yet fixed the concept for the Haverfordwest site. They have directed customers to a new social media account, dragoncollection_newrestaurant, to vote on what kind of restaurant they want. "We're opening this restaurant for you, so what would you like?" the couple asked, per the Western Telegraph.
For vendors, the buying window is open but the specification is not. A new site from an established, award-winning group means a known operator with proven processes, but the Haverfordwest opening will need its own POS, payments and workforce stack. The concept consultation suggests the group is still shaping the offer, which is exactly when suppliers can influence the build.
Sushimania hit with one-star hygiene rating in Brighton
Sushimania, the Japanese restaurant at 15-17 Middle Street in the Lanes, Brighton, received a one-star food hygiene rating following an inspection by Brighton and Hove City Council's food safety team on August 10, 2026. A rating of one means major improvement is required, the second lowest score a business can receive.
Inspectors found improvements were needed in the hygienic handling of food, including preparation, cooking, cooling and storage. The report also concluded that major improvements were necessary in the management of food safety, including the systems and checks in place to ensure food is safe to eat. The cleanliness and condition of the facilities and building were found to be generally satisfactory.
Sushimania has branches in London, Cambridge and Oxford, so the Brighton rating is a single-site issue rather than a group-wide failure. For vendors selling compliance, kitchen management or food safety technology, a one-star rating is a trigger event. Operators facing re-inspection and potential enforcement are more receptive to systems that digitise checks, temperature logs and audit trails than venues with a clean five.
Kastle raises $24m for AI lending agents
Kastle, a US fintech building AI agents for consumer lending, has raised $24 million in Series A funding, per Finextra. The company says its AI agents have processed more than $1.8 billion in transactions, and it lets financial institutions deploy specialised agents that work across their existing core systems.
" We give financial institutions an AI workforce that can operate across the systems they already have, so they can capture the benefits of AI now - not five years from now," said Rishi Choudhary, CEO of Kastle.
The relevance to UK hospitality is indirect but real. Lending to hospitality operators has been constrained since the pandemic, and any expansion of AI-driven underwriting capacity could speed up credit decisions for operators seeking refurbishment or acquisition finance. Vendors selling into hospitality should watch whether Kastle's UK footprint grows, since faster lending decisions tend to unlock capital expenditure that flows into technology.
A note on Peach Data
When a pub changes hands, a restaurant group expands, or a hygiene rating forces a rethink, the vendor's problem is the same: the contact data that was accurate last quarter is already stale. Peach Data provides verified, TPS-screened contact data across thousands of UK hospitality venues, so sales teams reach the right operator at the right moment. peachdata.co.uk