Retail and leisure doyen David Coffer dies

Retail and leisure agent David Coffer has died at the age of 76.

In a statement, Coffer’s family said he had fought “an inimitably strong battle with illness”.

“A man of profound insight and intellect, lion-like determination and courage, and unrivalled kindness; he could not fail to have an impact on anyone who met him,” the family added. “A supernova, his brightness will shine for decades on the many people whose lives he influenced.”

Starting out as a retail agent, Coffer met Lewis Davis in the late 1960s and the duo set up Davis Coffer Associates, with the Pizzaland chain becoming its first restaurant client. He created the Restaurant Property Advisors Society in 1992, which has since grown from 12 members to around 160, and formed Coffer Corporate Leisure, an advisory firm of which he was chair, in the early 2000s.

In an interview with EG in 2022, as his firm Davis Coffer Lyons marked its 50th anniversary, Coffer was preparing to offer his lessons from five recessions to less experienced dealmakers.

“I’ve seen so many downturns – they always produce a rich seam of opportunity and profit,” he said. “People make fortunes in these markets. If you are going to hang on as an agent… that’s where you want to be. The last place you want to be is sitting on your arse saying, ‘Oh no, I don’t own a penny.’”

He compared his career to that of an explorer on the high seas: “You start out, learn as you go along and discover new lands, problems and fights.”

And his love of the day job continued, in markets both good and bad. “I love working,” he said. “To me, the worst sound in the world is a Hoover. I don’t want to be at home. I want to work. I’m a warrior. I want to go out there fighting.

“It is tough, but it’s a challenge. When you achieve things, the feedback and the benefit means more than the money. It’s the pleasure of knowing you’ve succeeded against adversity.”

Tributes from across the industry highlight his mischievous sense of humour and larger-than-life personality, but also his ability to be blunt when necessary and the person you wanted to negotiate on your behalf. Yet they also praised him for a quality rarely spoken of in business: his kindness.

Davis described him as “a wonderful, generous man – a real larger-than-life character who I dearly loved and will never ever forget”.

“One day when I asked him why he was wearing a Hawaii-type T-shirt and shorts for an important meeting he quite forcefully told me that our visitors had come to use his brain, not to check out his sartorial elegance, or lack of,” Davis said. 

“It’s a well-used cliché to say, ‘I will never forget him’, but nothing could be more true. So many wonderful and hilarious memories.”

Restaurateur Jeremy King, who created the Corbin & King empire with Chris Corbin and is now making a comeback with three new restaurants, said he would miss Coffer deeply.

“David Coffer was intrinsically part of Chris Corbin’s and my restaurant career, having found just about every restaurant that we have ever owned. Even if we found them ourselves, we always asked David to negotiate. He understood us in so many ways and in other ways not and I always enjoyed the way he would lambast me if I was to turn down what he thought was a great opportunity. He cared so much and although we were not that different in age, he was always very paternal as well as fraternal in his relationship with me.”

There didn’t seem to be anything about the sector that David wasn’t aware of, and you would never forget a meeting with him

Another business he played a big role in was West End investor and developer Shaftesbury Capital, which merged last year with Capital & Counties.

Simon Quayle, who was an executive director at Shaftesbury, said: “We first started working with David in the early 1990s, and it is true to say that he played a big part in the growth of Shaftesbury, with our growing emphasis on hospitality and leisure in London’s West End.

“There didn’t seem to be anything about the sector that David wasn’t aware of, and you would never forget a meeting with him due to his humorous, cheeky and witty style, matched with expert and often innovative advice,” he said.

“David was one of a kind, the expert in his field, very successful in everything he did, but he never changed who he was: a very kind, passionate and funny man.”

His larger-than-life personality and his unbending enthusiasm and ambition meant he made a great impact on pretty much everyone he came into contact with

Hugh Seaborn, chief executive of Cadogan Estates, said: “David was a titan of the leisure property sector, certainly in London. His larger-than-life personality and his unbending enthusiasm and ambition meant he made a great impact on pretty much everyone he came into contact with and his professional achievements were enormous.”

At Davis Coffer Lyons, Coffer would regularly sail in with his own version of Tennyson’s Charge of the Light Brigade poem: “Ours is not to reason why, Ours is but to let and buy!”

Tracey Mills, an executive director who worked with him for 33 years, said the business had received hundreds of messages from people who held him in such high esteem. “David influenced a generation, and he made memories for so many people,” she said.

His peers, clients, colleagues and friends described him as an “icon” for the sector, who was “sharp as a razor”, a “visionary”, as well as “a handful” who could be “blunt – refreshingly so”. He was cherished for his humour and good company.

Mills added: “So many of the young agents years ago sought out David’s advice when they were setting up their own companies and he gave it freely and willingly. He was wise counsel. He most certainly spawned a whole host of other retail giants.”

She credited him with shaping her own career, but added: “To me, David was just David – a mate, and a father figure in later years when my own dear dad died, and the world is a little less sparkly without him in it.”

With his wife Ruth, Coffer had three children – Lisa, Daniel and Adam – and six grandchildren. Adam, who founded his own property business in 2007, described his father as an “inspiration” and his “best mate”. He was “the classic, aspirational Jewish boy” who had “climbed his way from nowhere to become the pioneer of his sector”, he said.

“Family wasn’t just blood. In business life, Dad would fight anyone who dared come at his colleagues and clients. He elicited a love and loyalty so rarely achieved by business leaders… he was a mensch – a man of integrity and dignity, who was always the one friends would turn to, to calm troubled waters.”

Photo © Louise Haywood-Schiefer