Christmas sales boost TRG
Strong Christmas trading has helped to deliver a "solid" trading performance at The Restaurant Group (TRG), which operates the Brunning and Price pub estate.
In a pre-close update TRG, which also runs the Frankie & Benny's, Chiquito and Garfunkel's brands, said trading had strengthened since its last update with like-for-like sales now down 2% on last year.
Like-for-like sales were down 3% at its last update for the 46 weeks to 15 November.
It said: "Trading for the final six weeks of the year to 27 December 2009 was good with strong like-for-like sales growth."
TRG will announce its full year results in early March 2010 and "expects to report well ahead of the top end of the range of current market forecasts, with net debt significantly lower than at the end of the 2008 financial year".
It added: "Against a very challenging economic backdrop, with acute pressures on consumer spend, this represents a solid performance."
Its 19 new restaurants opened during 2009 are all trading ahead of expectations and it has set a target of 15-20 new sites in 2010.
