23/05/2023 09:19:00
Mitchells & Butlers (M&B) saw a like-for-like sales growth of 8.5% for the 28 weeks ended 8 April 2023, built on volume growth in both food and drink. Pub & Bar reports that the Phil Urban-led business generated a turnover of £1.282bn during the period, compared to £1.159bn for its half year in 2022. M&B says costs remain a challenge, but medium-term cost outlook is now improving. It says it continues to work hard to mitigate as many of these pressures as it can through driving sales growth and identifying and implementing cost efficiencies. This, M&B believes, should allow margins to start to rebuild towards pre-Covid levels. Operating profit for the period was £99m (£121m in 2022), while profit before tax was £40m (£57m in 2022).
An activist investor has reportedly presented the Restaurant Group's chairman and chief executive with proposals to sell all its brands except for Wagamama. The Sunday Telegraph has reported that TMR Capital wants the Restaurant Group (TRG) to expand Wagamama before taking it private in a sale. Oasis Management Company, which holds a 12.3% stake, has been involved in an increasingly bitter fight with TRG's chairman Ken Hanna over its strategy and pay package. The Caterer reports that investors will be asked to vote on the policy at the group's AGM, but Oasis and several others plan to vote against the pay package for chief executive Andy Hornby, who received £792,000 last year.
Pub and bar occasions showed a 1.2 percentage point year-on-year decrease in the four-weeks to Sunday 16 April, the latest data from Lumina Intelligence has revealed. Regardless of the Easter bank holiday and school holidays, consumers remained cautious with their discretionary spending as the cost-of-living crisis continues to bite, despite confidence improvements, advises Morning Advertiser. However, weekly eating and drinking out penetration across the total market increased by 2 percentage points year-on-year during this period, attributed to a rise in consumer confidence following the Bank of England's predictions the UK will no longer enter a recession this year, boosting high-street footfall.
Wine bar and restaurant group Vinoteca is to close its huge site within Birmingham's Paradise development after less than a year, blaming rising energy prices and ongoing train strikes. Confirming the closure, the group said the challenges of the economic landscape has proved too great for the Chamberlain Square site, which only opened in July last year having first been slated to launch back in March 2020. As well as referencing the pandemic, energy charges and regular train strikes were listed as reasons behind the decision, reports the Restaurant.
Center Parcs UK and Ireland has been put up for sale for a reported £4bn to £5bn, nearly double what it was first bought for just eight years ago. The chain of six Center Parcs locations in the UK and Ireland is owned by Canadian private equity group Brookfield Property Partners. It was bought for £2.4bn in 2015. If a sale goes through, it would be one of the biggest property deals of the year, advises Sky News.
A decision by Greene King to trial card-only payments in some of its pubs in Notts has led to a boycott by some customers who say they will take their business elsewhere, advises Nottinghamshire Live.