Woe betide Britain’s brewers
At the end of October 2010, Brigid Simmonds, Chief Executive of the BBPA, called on the government to give the embattled brewing and pub industries a break by cutting regulation and reducing VAT.
Since the publication of these sobering figures, Britain’s beer bloggers have got into a frenzy over who or what is to be blamed for the decline in beer consumption. No one has come up with a satisfactory explanation, especially as the general decline has been weathered rather well by several pub groups.
The British public is continuing to go out to eat and drink and the country’s biggest pub and restaurant chains are benefiting.
Top pub, bar and casual dining chains saw like-for-like sales rise 1 percent in September compared to September 2009, according to the Coffer Peach Business Tracker.
The Tracker, which monitors sales performance across 17 major managed pub and restaurant operators, including Mitchells & Butlers, Whitbread, Pizza Hut, Punch Pub Co, Gondola and Tragus, showed total sales were up 2.3 percent on last September and up 15.1 percent on the previous month of August.
The September result follows a generally bright summer for the chains. Tracker figures showed like-for-likes ahead +1.5 percent in August, up +1.9 percent in July and +1.4 percent in June, against the same months in 2009.
But the government’s austerity plan, announced in October, which will see government departments implementing cuts ranging from 25 percent to 40 percent including a loss of as many as 500,000 public sector jobs, will really test the pub sector in the run up to Christmas.
Richard Hathaway, Head of Travel, Leisure and Tourism at audit consultancy KPMG, stressed businesses must remain focused with sustained cost management programmes, and effective marketing promotions during this traditionally quiet period.
