Restaurants see drop in trade as pub sales increase

Britain’s pubs fared well during July’s heatwave as managed pubs collectively saw like-for-like sales up 2.7% against last July.

The latest figures from CGA’s Coffer Peach Business Tracker also showed that sales across restaurant groups were down by 4.8% compared with the same month last year.

Altogether, the differing figures from each part of the sector resulted in the combined managed pub, bar and restaurant sector seeing like-for-likes flat in July, recording exactly 0% growth.

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 June, down slightly from the 0.7% at the end of June.

Peter Martin, vice president of CGA, said: “Continued sunshine and England’s longer than expected participation in the World Cup meant July followed a similar pattern to the previous month of June, when pubs were up 2.8%, except that restaurants were hit even harder. The fall of 1.8% in trading in June just got worse in July.”

He added: “Drink-led pubs and bars performed by far the strongest with like-for-likes up more than restaurants were down. Food-led pubs also suffered in the sun with negative like-for-likes, although not as dramatically as the restaurant operators.”

“It seems people just wanted to go out for a drink. Across managed pubs and bars drink sales were up 6.6% for the month, with food down -3.0%.”