No light at the end of the tunnel for pubs yet
The UK’s on-premise sector will shrink by a further 7,704 outlets over the next five years, with most closures coming in the next two years, according to a new forecast by CGA, a consultancy firm. There are now around 50,000 pubs serving Britain.
However, not all is lost. The recent CGA report (June 2013), on behalf of CAMRA (Campaign for Real Ale), predicts that café-wine bars, premium spirits and cask ale will be “tomorrow’s winners”. CGA said last year the on-premise sector in Britain was worth GBP 39 billion in food and drink retail sales, with GBP 24 billion from wet sales alone.
Volumes in the on-premise may be declining more quickly than off-trade volumes, but the on-premise still represents 61 percent of the value of alcohol sales in Britain and is growing value share, says CGA.
The really bad news is that 60 percent of licensees with a tied pub from one of the big tenanted/leased pub companies earn less than GBP 10,000 a year. How anybody can survive on such little money, let alone invest in their business to make it more viable, is beyond our guess.
According to Mintel, a research company, there is GBP 4.4 billion a year less money being spent in pubs now than five years ago. That’s around GBP 80,000 per pub when taking into account the fact there are 6,000 fewer pubs.
