Pubs and restaurants "slightly" up on Christmas and New Year 2012

Britain's pub and restaurant groups reported better Christmas and New Year trading than a year ago, but the increase was marginal, according to Coffer Peach Business Tracker.

Like-for-like sales for the six weeks up to January 6, were up 2.1% on the same period 12 months ago with total sales for the festive period, (including new openings) were ahead 4.7% among the 24 companies in the Tracker sample.

Peter Martin of Peach Factory, said that with both Christmas Day and New Year's Eve falling mid-week, and not affecting normal weekend trading, they would have been expecting a slightly better sales performance.

There were also regional differences with the trading period showing a stronger performance in London than outside the M25, and, over the period as a whole, pubs performed better than restaurants, although both saw a like-for-like increase on last year.

He said: "The figures reflect the essentially flat marketplace we have experienced for the past year or so, where any sales growth for the leading groups has come from new openings, which in turn has helped them increase market-share at the expense of independents. While there has been no big festive boost for eating and drinking out overall, neither has there been the decline some sections of the retail market have seen."

He added: "However, behind these headlines numbers, individual companies and brands have often performed quite differently as inter-brand competition also heats up."

The research tied with Harpers' own findings which saw individual companies performing strongly, but with still a lot of cautious purchasing and "value" being the key word.

Soren Jessen, owner of 1 Lombard Street and 1776 noticed across the festive season that there was less drinking at lunchtime, but its evening business was strong. Jessen believes the trend of polarisation will continue throughout 2013 and it will be another tough year for the trade - but one were good service and good value is rewarded.

Jamie Barber, one of the co-founders of Cabana Brasil which has three restaurants at Westfield Stratford, St Giles and Westfield London, said, its "2011/2012 like-for-likes were up over 30%.". Barber said there was no noticeable cutting back on spending across the festive season. However added: "Symptomatic of a post-Lehman's world, people don't spend several hundred pounds on a bottle of wine any more. In general terms Barber said: "Party bookings aside, I think that people are now so used to going out to restaurants that there isn't the massive surge in December that there was several years ago."

Riding high on the back of the festive season is Sartoria on Savile Row. Graziano Arricale, general manager, said: "We had a fantastic festive season with the restaurant being busier than last year, which was also a very good year." With regard to trends and what people were buying or cutting back on, Arricale said: "We found that people spent but were a lot more aware of where they were spending their money. We found wine spends were good but a lot more thought and tasting went into the selections for the large events and diners at the table were willing to spend where they saw value."

• Sommeliers