Walking a tightrope

I rather liked Jim Clarke's take on JD Wetherspoon's trading under the English smoking ban.

Speaking at his last results presentation as finance director before he leaves next month to join property agency Countrywide, Clarke said if you'd offered him a one per cent rise in sales in the second month of the ban a year ago he would've "bitten your hand off".

He added he'd be "reasonably happy" if for this financial year Wetherspoon achieved the same figure overall. Fingers will doubtless be crossed ever so tightly even for this modest outcome.

It is a scenario likely to confront the sector as a whole. Punch Taverns recently warned of profits being lower this year - though the weather, not the smoking ban, was largely to blame. Others are likely to concur in the weeks to come, though the true picture, good or bad, will remain clouded for some months.

Meanwhile Clarke has seen many changes in his decade-long tenure at Wetherspoon, particularly in the shift towards food, where sales are up 10-fold since 1997 to £240m. But the smoking ban has inevitably impacted on bar sales, and machine income has similarly been down in the opening weeks of the restriction.

Price has always been a selling point for Wetherspoon. There have been some price hikes across its estate, though volumes have remained essentially flat. At the same time as the group wants to maintain its 'pricewatch gap', conversely the City wants to see prices nudging upwards.

Herein lies the rub for Wetherspoon. Its food move is designed to offset declines elsewhere and attract a new market to its refurbished pubs. If it can successfully appeal to both its core customers and a new breed - which you can describe alternately as a tightrope walking exercise or a plate-spinning one - then it should be able to ride out the long winter nights, when a smoking ban will really come into its own.

If it can't, life could get rather tough…