Hoggies Hog Roast Opens in Southsea

The News, Portsmouth

Hoggies Hog Roast officially opened its doors in Marmion Road, Southsea, on Monday, September 15, 2025 by Pompey legend Alan Knight.

Transcript

00:00I'm Lewis and I'm one of the owners of Huggies.

00:03Tell me a bit about Huggies and how it all came about and where we are.

00:06Okay, so Huggies was actually a friend of mine, Mark, who's a fellow owner of this.

00:11It was a concept that he came up with, first of all.

00:14So he was looking to set this up about a year ago.

00:17And in May this year he asked me if I would mind partnering with him to sort of bring it to life.

00:23Also, in doing that, me and him had crosshairs of we wanted to bring Simon into it.

00:29So Simon's a long-standing friend of mine, who's the best friend at his wedding.

00:33And also, who in a roundabout way, me and Simon for years said we always wanted to work together.

00:38So at the beginning of our careers, we both were working together in kitchens.

00:43And we said, oh, one day it'd be like a dream to open a place together.

00:48And then with Mark saying that, Mark knew Simon as well.

00:52He's got a big following locally and he'd worked at the Queen's Hotel.

00:57He's won awards, everything.

00:59So we wanted to get him to come along and do it.

01:01So I had a meeting with him early June and sort of brought the idea up to him, said what we wanted to do.

01:09And he was like, yeah, I'm in.

01:11I'm 100% in.

01:13So we cut to two, three weeks later.

01:16We'd run around.

01:17We were looking at venues.

01:18We finally found this place.

01:19It was a bit of back and forth.

01:21We managed to get a deal signed for this one in late July, was it?

01:27Sorry, yeah.

01:28Late July sort of time.

01:30And then six weeks down the line, this place was here.

01:34And we're open and we're serving people.

01:36And the dreams sort of come true.

01:37So, yeah, it's massive, massive achievement.

01:39So we're on Marmion Road.

01:41Yeah.

01:4227 Marmion Road.

01:45And you probably hear it in the background, but what's the reaction been like?

01:49It's been massive.

01:50I mean, we put an event thing just to get an idea of how many people we're going to have turn up on the day.

01:56I think we sold 123 tickets plus another 20 on Facebook.

02:03I had a number a minute ago.

02:05After we first opened, we had done 88 covers or 80 summit covers in the first half hour of being open.

02:12So we opened at nine and the guys just got mobbed.

02:14But, yeah, everyone seems to be happy, enjoying it, loving the breakfast, the Scots sausage, which you can't get many places in Portsmouth.

02:23So, yeah, it's been a great reaction so far.

02:26So tell me why hog roasts?

02:28Was it always going to be that?

02:30It was always going to be that in terms of Mark had come up with the idea.

02:34So he was away somewhere in the country and he'd come across the concept and he's like, oh, there's nothing doing that in Portsmouth.

02:41There's no way that's doing hog roast, fetishly chickens or this sort of idea.

02:45So he'd sort of seen it in somewhere else and come up with the idea.

02:48He had it there on the back burner as he'd set up the company and had the idea.

02:53But then we just went together.

02:54So Mark's been my business mentor and business coach.

02:59He owns 25 businesses.

03:01So he is a massive entrepreneur.

03:03He's a great guy as well.

03:04He does a lot of charity work.

03:07And teaming up with him was a dream anyway to do stuff.

03:10We work together in some capacities anyway.

03:13But bringing Simon into the mix just sort of fulfilled a lifelong promise to one another.

03:17So it's brilliant.

03:18Brilliant.

03:19I wish you the best of luck.

03:20Thank you so much.

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