UKH: ‘Decision to permit takeaway alcohol vital lifeline for businesses’

By Lisa Riley

Published: 04 November, 2020

UK Hospitality (UKH) has welcomed the “pragmatic decision” to allow restaurants, bars and pubs to sell pre-ordered takeaway alcohol sales during lockdown 2.0.

The decision would ensure a “vital lifeline for businesses” and enable venues to retain a “valuable link with their communities”, said CEO Kate Nicholls.

“It is a welcome and helpful clarification that restaurants and pubs will be permitted to continue with off-licence sales of alcohol through delivery, click and collect and takeaway for pre-ordered sales,” she said.

Having that channel of revenue had proven a lifeline to many businesses in the first lockdown, she added.

The move also meant that “the valuable community service” that pubs, in particular, provide to communities, would be sustained during a second lockdown, the prospect of which will be "concerning many vulnerable and lonely people who suffered during the first lockdown”, she said.

UKH also said the delivery and collection provisions represented a “common sense approach” to minimising waste.

“It is a relief to have sight of this guidance – yet again, venues have precious little time in which to digest and implement them. A vital element to the successful application of the guidance, at short notice, will be clear local authority guidance on their enforcement, so that venues have confidence that there will be consistency across England.”

The govt U-turn on on-trade lockdown alcohol sales follows intense lobbying from the UK’s various hospitality trade bodies.

Still in lobbying mode to help the beleaguered hospitality sector, earlier today a group of trade bodies called for a six-month support package to secure the future of the industry.

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