Propel Newsletter Archive Page

Marston’s – strong Christmas trading drives 8.1% lfl sales growth in year to date: Marston’s has said strong Christmas trading has driven 8.1% like-for-like sales growth in its year to date. Total retail sales in the group’s managed and franchised pubs for the 16-week period to 20 January 2024 were up 8.8% on last year. It said both drink sales and food sales have been strong, “demonstrating the resilience and appeal of our predominantly suburban pubs”. Like-for-like sales for the 16-week period were up 8.1%, reflecting strong trading over the festive period. Like-for-like sales in the first nine weeks of the period were up 7.4%, with positive trading momentum continuing into the festive period. In the following seven weeks, like-for-like sales were up 8.4%. For the key festive days (Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, Boxing Day, New Year's Eve), like-for-like sales were up 9.6%. Justin Platt, chief executive of Marston’s, said: “I am pleased to report a strong trading performance with like-for-likes up 8.4% over the festive period. It has been an encouraging start to the year. This, together with an improving outlook in which inflationary headwinds are broadly abating, and the actions we are taking to operate more efficiently and rebuild margins, position Marston’s well for the year ahead. I am delighted to have joined Marston's and am excited about the opportunity ahead. This is a great business and, whilst still early days, I’ve been impressed by the dedication, talent and expertise of the team. I look forward to getting to know both the team, and the business, better over the weeks and months ahead and working together to build on the trading momentum to maximise the group’s future potential.”

Propel’s latest Multi-Site Database to be released on Friday with seven category segmentation: The next Propel Multi-Site Database, produced in association with Virgate, providing details of more than 3,000 multi-site operators, will be released on Friday (26 January) at midday to Premium members – and companies will now be searchable in seven main segments. The seven segments are: pubs and bars, cafe bakery, quick service restaurants, casual dining, fine dining, hotel and experiential leisure. The database features, for example, 755 operators in the pubs and bars segment. It is updated each month – this edition includes 20 new companies and brings the total to 3,050. Premium members also receive access to five other databases: the Turnover & Profits Blue Book, the New Openings Database, the UK Food and Beverage Franchisor Database, the UK Food and Beverage Franchisee Database and the Who’s Who of UK Food & Beverage. Propel is evolving its Premium subscription offer by launching Premium Club on Thursday, 1 February. All circa 4,000 existing subscribers automatically become members. The launch of Premium Club comes with even more benefits. All subscribers will be offered a 20% discount on tickets to four Propel paid-for events – The Excellence in Pub Retailing Conference (14 May), Social Media for Profit (18 July), the Talent and Training Conference (1 October) and Restaurant Marketer and Innovator (two days in January 2025). Operators will also be able to send up to four members of staff to each of our four Multi-Club Conferences for free. Premium Club members receive their daily Propel Info newsletter 11 hours earlier than standard subscribers, at 7pm the evening before. They also receive videos of presentations at eight Propel conference events two weeks after they are held. This represents around 100 videos of industry insight over the course of the year. Premium Club members will be sent a dedicated monthly newsletter that will highlight key updates in the sector and direct subscribers to all the vital content their membership offers. Premium Club members also receive exclusive opinion columns every Friday at 5pm, which include the thoughts of Propel group editor Mark Wingett and a host of industry leaders from across the sector. A Propel Premium subscription costs an annual sum of £495 plus VAT for operators and £595 plus VAT for suppliers. Companies can now have an unlimited number of people receive access to Propel Premium for a year for £995 plus VAT – whether they are an operator or a supplier. Email kai.kirkman@propelinfo.com today to sign up.

Rockfish performing ‘well’ with growth in sales and margin, in process of completing £3m fundraise: Rockfish, the nine-strong seafood restaurant group led by Mitch Tonks, has said it currently “performing well with growth in sales, margin and overall conversion”, which has returned the group to “budgeted levels of profitability in the current financial year”. It comes as the south west-based business said it was “in the process of completing a £3m fundraise” and in legals on a fourth beachfront site, to add its pipeline of future openings in Salcombe, Sidmouth and Topsham. Commenting on its accounts for the year to 30 April 2023, the company said: “In what was a difficult year for hospitality, sales increased in the year from £13.4m to £13.6m, reflecting the group’s enduring appeal to customers for both its restaurants and wholesale/retail seafood offerings. Ebitda dropped from £2.6m to £1.94m. Group Ebitda fell from £992,000 to £84,000, the result heavily impacted by food, wage and energy inflation (the latter at 330%), and by successive base rate rises, which increased the group’s interest charges by 33%. Nonetheless, Rockfish has built a pipeline of three prime waterfront sites in Salcombe, Sidmouth and Topsham, the group also reports that it is in legals on a fourth beachfront site. The business is performing well with growth in sales, margin and overall conversion which has returned the group to budgeted levels of profitability in the current financial year.” To support the expansion, the company said it is in the process of completing a £3m fundraise, which was “materially oversubscribed by existing shareholders and institutional investors which demonstrates the level of confidence in the brand, management and the future business plan”. Rockfish owns and controls its own seafood supply chain, which is based on the quayside in Brixham, Devon. The group said this gives it a “significant competitive advantage, enabling it to not only maintain a high-quality supply of seafood to its restaurants, but also maximise margin”. Tonks, founder and chief executive, said: “2022/23 was a difficult year; the inflationary challenges in particular felt relentless. I am extremely proud of how the company rose to meet those challenges and believe we will be stronger for it in the near and long-term. The trading performance of 2024 demonstrates the skill of our leadership team and the resilience of our brand. With recent confidence low in our sector, I am delighted that Rockfish was oversubscribed in our fundraising, with support from existing and new shareholders. Rockfish is a strong brand with a unique offer, and I feel we have regained the momentum we had in 2019. Our three new openings and the commercial advantages of our supply chain will see sales, profitability and the estate grow in the coming year.” Will Beckett, Rockfish chairman, and co-founder and chief executive of Hawksmoor, added: “Rockfish remains, to my mind, one of the stand-out companies in the hospitality industry. Like many, it has had challenges post-covid, but while dealing with them, has remained focused on the customer having a fantastic experience, on sourcing the best produce, and on trying to change the way people experience seafood in the UK.”

Everyman lines up four new openings in 2024 and continues to consider further acquisitions following 16.7% revenue growth: Everyman, the independent, premium cinema group, has lined up four new openings in 2024 and said it will continue to consider further acquisitions after reporting 16.7% revenue growth for the year ending 28 December 2023. New openings include Bury St Edmunds in Q1 2024, Durham and Stratford (London) in Q3 2024, and Cambridge in Q4 2024. “Further, as demonstrated with Tivoli, the company will continue to consider opportunistic acquisitions,” the business said. Titles expected to be revenue drivers in 2024 include Wicked, Despicable Me 4, Paddington in Peru, Joker: Folie à Deux, Inside Out 2, Mufasa: The Lion King, Dune: Part II and an as-yet untitled Gladiator sequel. It comes after the business reported revenue growth of 16.7% to approximately £90.9m (2022: £77.9m with VAT benefit removed) for the period. Group Ebitda was up 19.1% to approximately £16.2m (2022: £13.6m with VAT benefit removed). Market share increased to 4.8% (2022: 4.5%). As previously reported, it agreed a new three-year loan facility of £35m with Barclays and NatWest banks during the year, “ensuring that the group is soundly financially structured and well positioned to take advantage of opportunities moving forward”. The group’s performance in the second half 2023 was marginally affected by strikes, which led to certain key titles moving to 2024. “The board is pleased, however, to re-confirm market expectations for 2024 and has confidence in the prospects of the business moving forward,” it said. Four new venues were opened in the year – in Marlow, Salisbury, Northallerton and Plymouth – alongside last month’s acquisition of the Tivoli venues in Bath and Cheltenham from Empire Cinemas. The Group now operates 44 venues with a total of 152 screens (2022: 38 venues with a total of 130 screens). A paid-for average ticket price of £11.65 was a 3.2% increase versus the prior year (2022: £11.29), while food and beverage spend per head of £10.29 was a 10.2% increase versus the prior year (2022: £9.34). Chief executive Alex Scrimgeour said: We have delivered robust, double-digit growth in both revenue and Ebitda against a challenging economic backdrop, delays to new openings and both writers’ and actors’ strikes. Further operational progress has been made with improvements in all key metrics, illustrating that our proposition remains as relevant as ever. I would like to take this opportunity to thank our incredible venue teams and head office without whom the positive achievements of this year would not have been possible.”

Economy set to get boost from easing inflation as ‘cost-of-living crisis should soon be at an end’: Victory in the fight over inflation will boost economic growth this year, according to the EY Item Club, leaving families feeling better off. UK GDP will grow by 0.9% in 2024, the economic forecaster predicted, faster than the 0.7% growth it had previously anticipated. The City forecaster upgraded its outlook after recent falls in inflation, reports The Telegraph. Although the headline rate rose for the first time in ten months in December, EY Item Club said inflation is still set to drop to the Bank of England’s 2% target by May. This will allow officials to cut interest rates from their current level of 5.25% to 4% by the end of the year. Lower borrowing costs will boost the economy and means the period of stagnation that followed the pandemic, and the cost-of-living crisis should soon be at an end, said Martin Beck, chief economic adviser to the Item Club. Consumer spending should rise 0.9% across the year, more than the 0.7% previously predicted. Economic recovery this year will be driven by “real wage growth, interest rates coming down, the boost that will deliver to confidence and sentiment, energy bills dropping 15% in April, and tax cuts – the ones we have already had and probably more at the Budget in March,” Beck said. “The fall in energy bills in April is looking even bigger than people thought – wholesale gas prices are really dropping, they are lower than they were just before Ukraine got invaded,” he added. “That will filter through the wider economy.” However, the outlook for companies remains weak, with business investment set to drop 1% this year before recovering in 2025. EY Item Club’s forecast chimes with a survey from the Federation of Small Businesses (FSB), which shows companies’ confidence fell back in the final months of 2023. Tina McKenzie, chief executive at the FSB, said things are particularly tough in hospitality and retail. She said: “With small hospitality firms reporting a big fall in their confidence, there are fears of yet more distress and closures among this sector, so vital to community spirit and our social fabric. The help extended to small firms in the retail, leisure and hospitality sectors at the autumn statement via an extension of business rates relief is a welcome start, and will mitigate their tax burden later this year, but right now, things are tough.”

All parts of the UK suffered from economic stagnation since 2010: All parts of the UK have suffered from economic stagnation since 2010, according to a report by the Centre for Cities. It said most cities and large towns have seen strong employment growth since 2010, but it has been strongest in London, so an even larger share of jobs are now clustered in and around the capital. Because more people have moved into work there, households’ disposable income has also risen more in London than elsewhere, reports the Financial Times. Paul Sweeney, director of policy and research and the think tank, said flatlining productivity in London was “particularly alarming” as the capital and its surrounding region had previously been the engine of national productivity growth. But poor productivity growth has held back wages almost everywhere – both in centres of cutting-edge innovation and in northern cities suffering persistently high levels of deprivation. The Centre for Cities said that since 2010, the average person in Cambridge had lost out on £21,340 compared with the income they could have expected if pre-2010 trends had continued, while the average for Milton Keynes was a loss of £21,610. In Burnley, where incomes are much lower in absolute terms, the cumulative shortfall was £28,090, while in Glasgow it was £23,500, and average per capita income has fallen outright in Aberdeen, previously one of the UK’s most prosperous cities. In the handful of places where income growth had accelerated since 2010, the main explanation was earlier underperformance, the Centre for Cities said. “The UK hasn’t struggled to create jobs, which is very welcome,” the report said. “It does, however, appear to have struggled to generate ‘good’ jobs.”

Men work less since covid while women put in more hours: Men have been working an hour less each week since lockdown, according to new data published by the Office for National Statistics (ONS). Men worked an average of 35.3 hours per week in 2022, roughly an hour less than in 2019, and more than three hours less than in 1998. By contrast, women slightly increased their average weekly hours from 27.4 in 2019 to 27.9 hours in 2022, reports The Telegraph. This was not enough to make up for the reduction in men’s hours, with the overall effect equivalent to losing 310,000 people from the workforce. Statisticians also revealed generational differences in trends related to the number of hours worked. The ONS said Generation Z men and women were, on average, working fewer hours compared with pre-covid, while Baby Boomers were working longer hours. The ONS said: “Trends in average weekly hours worked are very different for men and women. For men, average weekly hours worked have dropped significantly … In comparison, average weekly hours for women have trended upwards.” The ONS said that a general shift towards a shorter working week had also been driven by women and older workers making up a larger share of today’s workforce, as these groups worked fewer hours to begin with. However, it added that there had been a “significant fall” in the number of hours worked by full-time men aged between 25 to 49 since 1998. It said the increase in the number of hours worked by women was “an indication of greater flexibility in working arrangements,” as working from home became more common during the pandemic. But it added that increases in women’s hours worked had not offset a decline in hours worked by men. Statisticians said the average working week for both men and women was now around 20 minutes shorter than in 2019. The average hours worked by men fell in every age category except those aged over 65 years during the pandemic. Louise Murphy, an economist at the Resolution Foundation, said the reduction in hours had been driven by men in low-paid jobs. She said: “We know that higher income men are tending to work longer hours and lower-income men are working shorter hours.” She added: “I think there definitely will be people worried about this. When you compare it to 2010, when overall economic growth was also quite sluggish, one of the only things really that contributed positively to the UK was increasing labour. If you look towards the rest of the 2020s, not only have we seen that one of the big stories of the pandemic has been rising economic activity, but also there looks to be signs that men in particular are working fewer hours. If we’re thinking about how to kind of achieve growth in the future, we need to think about how to make sure we’ve got the labour supply that we need to do that.”