Easter and Royal Wedding boosts managed chains

The bumper Easter and Royal Wedding weekends boosted like-for-like sales by 3.8% amongst 21 major pub and restaurant chains, according to the Coffer Peach Business Tracker.

The Tracker, which monitors companies including Mitchells & Butlers, Whitbread and Gondola, also showed total sales were up 6.2% on April last year.

But Peach Factory's Peter Martin said the figures hid a more complex picture of consumer spending.

"While the school holidays had a positive effect, Easter 2011 wasn't as good as Easter 2010 and while the hot weather helped pubs in particular, it also brought out more home barbecues as a counter-attraction," he said.

"The extra holiday for the Royal Wedding, Easter being later, how school holidays fell and the sunny weather all played a role, but not always as might have been expected," said Martin.

"The challenge for pubs and restaurants has been to convince people to go out rather than stay at home and watch the Royal Wedding on their own TV, for example, or enjoy the sun around their own or friends' barbecues. So to grow sales over the month is good news, with the run up to the Easter weekend particularly strong.

"Hot weather, as we had this year, generally tends to favour pubs, especially those with outside areas, rather than restaurants.

"Last year, it rained over Easter and many people went shopping especially to malls, and to inside entertainment like the cinema, benefiting restaurants in those locations. Good weather can be a double-edged sword."

Caution​

Separate figures the four days of Easter, from Good Friday to Easter Monday, actually showed sales down 6.5% on a like-for-like basis on the 2010 Easter weekend holiday, while total sales were down 3.7%.

The April result mark a continuation of steady, positive like-for-like growth across eating and drinking-out this year, with March ahead 0.9% and February up 3.1% on the comparable months in 2010.

Month-on-month April was down 11.2% on March, because March was a five-week, rather than a four-week, month.

However, Trevor Watson of Davis Coffer Lyons sounded a note of caution. "Although the Royal Wedding was good for family related leisure businesses, some venues found the succession of long weekends disruptive to trading patterns. Around the country, people are now beginning to feel the impact of tax rises, and underlying inflation. Consumer spending nationwide is likely to remain under continued pressure over the next few months."

Richard Hathaway, head of Travel, Leisure and Tourism at KPMG added: "Further pressures from the recent VAT increase, low consumer confidence and falling disposable incomes will apply additional strain on operators. To add to the burden, mounting fuel and utility costs and an uncertain jobs market is making many businesses nervous about the rest of 2011."

Jonathan Leinster, head of UBS European Leisure Research, said: "Hardly a shabby result but all things considered, this is not a spectacular outcome for the month."