Today’s news in brief – 08/05/24

JD Wetherspoon expects top-line of profit guidance as like-for-like sales rose by 5.2% in Q1, with year-to-date sales rising 8.3% despite this year’s bank holiday (6 May) being a week later. The company had opened two pubs and either sold or surrendered to the landlord a total of 18 “smaller or older” pubs in the year-to-date. As a result, there was a net cash inflow of £6.8m from the 18 disposals. 

Closures in the hospitality sector slowed in Q1, going from eight sites a day in 2023 to four a day, according to data from CGA. The current total of 98,745 hospitality venues means the market is down by 2.5% year-on-year, meaning one in 40 venues has shut in the past 12 months. However, the latest three-month snapshot provides cautious confidence that a slight easing of cost pressures may be starting to put the brakes on business closures.

Atis will open a new flagship store on London’s Regent Street on 3 June, marking the brand’s sixth location in London and the first opening of 2024. The salad bowl company has additional sites planned for Monument, Moorgate, Covent Garden and Battersea by the end of the year. Since inaugurating its first store in Old Street in October 2019, the brand now has stores in Belgravia, Notting Hill, Canary Wharf and Borough Yards. 

American chef Rodney Wages will open his first UK restaurant in Edinburgh on 21 May. Avery Edinburgh is the evolution of Wages’ Michelin-starred restaurant of the same name, which opened in San Francisco in 2018. In 2023, Wages decided to close Avery San Francisco and move the restaurant across the Atlantic to Edinburgh, having “fallen in love” with the Scottish capital on a family holiday the year before.