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Holiday season boosts eating-out market

Managed pubs saw collective like-for-likes grow 0.2% against August last year, while restaurant groups were up 1.4% for the month, with more mixed weather bringing better news for the country’s casual dining chains.

The latest figures would come as a “huge relief” for restaurant operators, who have been under the cosh of late, not least because of the early summer heatwave which was great news for Britain’s pubs as the public headed outdoors, but little help for the country’s restaurant chains,” said CGA, which produces the Tracker in partnership with Coffer Group and RSM.

“More mixed weather during August and a damp bank holiday weekend will have helped the casual dining market, with the school holidays having also helped as parents looked to keep their families occupied,” said director Karl Chessell.

Regionally, London performed better than the rest of the country, with August like-for-like sales up 1.5% on the same period last year, while outside the M25 trading was up just 0.4%.

Underlying like-for-like growth for the 47 companies in the Tracker cohort, which represents both large and small groups, was running at 0.5% for the 12 months to the end of August, the same as it was at the end of July.

Total sales growth across the pubs and restaurants, which includes the effect of new openings, was 3.2% in August, reflecting a slowdown but not a halt in brand roll-outs, and was running at 3.7% for the 12 months to the end of the month.

The positive news follows last week’s announcement that the number of licensed sites across Britain had dropped to 119,800 in the past year, with a total of 3,116 restaurants, pubs, bars and other licensed premises having been closed down (Market Growth Monitor).

The Coffer Peach Tracker industry sales monitor for the UK pub, bar and restaurant sector collects and analyses performance data from 47 operating groups, with a combined turnover of over £9 billion.