Managed pub chains see 4.2% December sales dip

Leading managed pub and restaurant chains saw like-for-like sales drop 4.2% in December as the snow hit.

The figures come from the Coffer Peach Business Tracker, which monitors sales performance across 17 major pub and restaurant operators, including Mitchells & Butlers, Whitbread, Pizza Hut, Punch Pub Co, Gondola and Tragus.

Robust trading over the holiday weeks at the end of the month helped to pull back some trade lost due to the severe weather but was not enough to avoid an overall trading fall in the sector's busiest trading period.

Total sales, which include new openings, were down -3.4%.

"Taken together, figures for the two weeks of Christmas and New Year were actually ahead of 2009 as customers were determined to make it out of their homes, with the week after Christmas and including New Year particularly strong," said Peach Factory's Peter Martin.

"However, operators were still unable to make up for the snow-induced sales losses earlier. The first three weeks of the five-week month had seen negative sales figures across the market, with the first week seeing a double-digit dip"

Heartening year​

The December drop ends a year that had heartened the sector, with six consecutive months of positive same-store sales being recorded up to and including November.

Richard Hathaway, head of Travel, Leisure and Tourism at KPMG added: "The strongest brands and best operators continue to take market share in what remains a fragile consumer economy.

"Further pressures from the recent VAT increase and weak confidence will drive further differentiation in performance between the winners and losers."

Jonathan Leinster, head of European leisure and tobacco research, at UBS Investment Bank, said: "Total year-on-year sales fell 3%, down from +5% a year ago. We believe that the listed pub companies are outperforming other contributors to the index, nonetheless we expect the trading updates that begin next week will be poor."