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Young’s reports record half-year performance, like-for-like sales up 5.7%: Young’s has reported a record half-year performance with revenue for the 26 weeks to 29 September 2025 up 5.4% to £263.6m, while adjusted Ebitda rose 5.9% to £62.5m, and said that the second half of its financial year had “started well”. During the first half of its financial year, the company saw like-for-like sales increase 5.7%, which it said was from a combination of Young’s well-invested, premium estate and the excellent weather during late spring and early summer. Adjusted pre-tax profit was up 9.9% to £31.1m, driven by top line growth and strong conversion, despite continued pressures from National Living Wage increases, National Insurance and food inflation. It said that healthy cash generation, working capital timing and a second half weighted investment plan had reduced debt since the full year by £26.5m to £221.8m (excluding leases), with net debt to Ebitda at 2.0 times (2.6 times including leases) and in line with its capital allocation framework. Total pub Ebitda was up 4.9% to £77.4m (2024: £73.8m). The business said that the realisation of the main City Pub Group integration benefits was now complete, with drink margins up just under two percentage points across the acquired estate, and food margins up just under seven percentage points compared with this time last year, reflecting the procurement benefits and operational improvements that have been implemented over the last 18 months. It said that these synergy benefits have partially offset the additional costs that Young’s has faced across the period, including the increases in National Living Wage, National Insurance and food inflation, which total just over £4.7m in the first half of the financial year. The company said: “The excellent weather for the first half of the period delivered a significant boost to drink sales, which were up 6.5% in total. Our food sales continued to grow, up 3.8% in total. Our Young’s Rooms continued to deliver a solid performance with total revenue up 4.0%. During the period we continued our investment in pubs with rooms, with The Alma (Wandsworth) starting a room refresh that will be running through to November, crucial for continued growth. Our average room rate for Young’s has improved by £5.13 with an increase in RevPar (revenue per available room) of £3.91 to £92.40.” The company said that like-for-like revenue for the last thirteen weeks was ahead of last year by 4.2%. It said: “We are encouraged by recent trading, which is in line with our expectations. Total sales for the last thirteen weeks are up by 4.4%. The Autumn Internationals will continue to provide a welcome boost, particularly the pubs in our Southwest London heartland. Christmas bookings are already looking strong, with pre-booked sales up 22% on this time last year. The teams also remain focused on ensuring we drive our lucrative walk-in trade, which ultimately underpins the overall success of the Christmas and New Year period.” The business invested £12.6m across its existing estate in the first six months of the year, and anticipates that capital investment for the second half of the year will be circa £25m, incorporating major schemes already nearing completion at the Swan (Walton-on-Thames), Home Cottage (Redhill), Hoste (Burnham Market), Victoria (Surbiton), and Larkshall (Chingford). During the period it disposed of one non-core asset for total proceeds of £600,000. Young’s also announced a £10m share buyback programme, which it said reflected “a disciplined approach to capital allocation and confidence in long-term growth aspirations”. Simon Dodd, chief executive of Young’s, said: “Our proven strategy and unwavering commitment to operating a premium, well-invested managed house estate continues to be reflected in these results, with a record first half performance following another strong period of trading and market outperformance. I am particularly proud that this performance was achieved against a backdrop of significant ongoing cost headwinds. Record trading in our estate over the summer, our biggest ever Wimbledon fortnight and the full benefit of City Pub Group integration synergies helped to offset the impact of these pressures. The second half has started well, but we remain mindful of ongoing economic uncertainty and its potential impact on consumer sentiment, and we will continue to monitor trading conditions closely. Despite everything we have faced in recent years, Young’s is well-positioned to continue to perform well financially thanks to the unparalleled quality of our estate and our resilient business model.”

Premium Club subscribers to receive updated Turnover & Profits Blue Book tomorrow: Premium Club subscribers will receive the updated Turnover & Profits Blue Book tomorrow (Friday, 14 November), at noon. The database will feature six new companies and 115 updated accounts. The database now features a total of 1,182 companies, with 737 in profit and 445 making a loss. The Blue Book is updated each month and ranks companies by turnover, profit and profit conversion, listing directors’ earnings for the past five years. Premium Club subscribers also receive access to five other databases: the New Openings Database, the Multi-Site Database, the UK Food and Beverage Franchisor Database, the UK Food and Beverage Franchisee Database and the Who’s Who of UK Hospitality. All Premium Club subscribers will be offered a 20% discount on tickets to Propel paid-for events and discounts on specialist sector reports. Operators that are Premium Club subscribers are also able to send up to four members of staff to each of our four Multi-Club Conferences for free. Premium Club subscribers 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 subscribers 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 Premium Club 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 Premium Club for a year for £995 plus VAT – whether they are an operator or supplier. Email kai.kirkman@propelinfo.com today to sign up.

Rising costs force UK restaurant groups to cook up overseas deals: A British restaurant founder has said that the country’s dining scene is still being “battered” by economic pressures, driving many operators to seek relief overseas. Martin Williams, founder of M Restaurants, now chief executive of Evolv Collection, the restaurant group behind London institutions such as Bluebird and Sartoria, told The Times it was “no coincidence” that a growing wave of British restaurants were expanding into the US. “You’ve had headwind after headwind,” he said, pointing to food inflation, wage inflation and national insurance increases that have hit the industry “very badly” this year. Williams said: “The sector’s been battered. We’re in danger of being the boy that cried wolf because we’ve been saying for about six years that this will be a death knell in the hospitality sector and we won’t be able to survive. But ultimately, you can always survive.” Williams said investment that once fuelled domestic growth was now being diverted abroad to the US and, increasingly, to the UAE – markets that were more profitable places to operate in than the UK. Evolv, formerly D&D London, the restaurant empire founded by the late design impresario Sir Terence Conran, currently operates restaurants including Bluebird in Chelsea and Coq d’Argent in the City. It has financial backing from the investment companies Breal Capital and Calveton and in its latest year of accounts for the period to September last year it made a £13m operating loss on revenues of £126m. Evolv has already opened two restaurants in the US, with a third on the way, but Williams is not giving up on Britain. The group recently relaunched Liverpool Street Chop House & Tavern, reviving another Conran concept but introducing a £5 pint on the menu all day. “We wanted to make it aspirational but still very accessible,” he explained. For Chop House, the strategy appears to be working: turnover is up 150% since reopening, and the average customer spend has risen to £75. “Ultimately,” Williams said, “if you give guests something special, they’ll come back.”

Nobu reveals major London plans amid UK push: Robert De Niro’s hospitality brand is open to considering new luxury residences in London after the success of its restaurants and hotel, the firm’s co-founders have said. Nobu Hospitality first launched in London in 1997 with a restaurant at Old Park Lane. That was followed by a hotel and restaurant in Portman Square at the end of 2020. Now, with work starting on its first UK location outside of the capital, Nobu’s co-founders have told City AM their thinking for a possible third London site for the first time. Meir Teper, the American-Israeli film producer, said a third London site would be focused on Nobu-branded residences instead of featuring a restaurant and hotel so as not to compete with the existing locations. While no firm decisions have been made at this point, Nobu views the UK as a growth area and is also open to looking at other UK cities apart from London and Manchester for future projects. It comes as the business has started work on its first UK location outside of London. The £360m, Viadux 2 development, will be constructed in the Deansgate area of central Manchester. Rising to 76-storeys, the skyscraper will be the tallest of its kind in the UK when finished in six years’ time. When complete, the 76-storey landmark will include a Nobu-branded, 160-room hotel, 450 residences and a restaurant located in converted Victorian railway arches. Teper added that the Nobu was open to considering other UK cities for a future project. He said: “We have to make sure that any destination that we go to the locals embrace the concept and so forth. And I think potentially maybe one or two of the cities in the UK. But slowly, we’ll see what happens.”

Chefs turn up heat on King’s estate to save the oldest Indian: Some of Britain’s best-known chefs are whipping up a veritable storm over plans by the King’s property company to convert the home of the country’s oldest Indian restaurant into offices. The Times reports that Raymond Blanc, Michel Roux Jr and Michael Caines are among chefs calling on the Crown Estate to engage in meaningful dialogue and act responsibly to save Veeraswamy, the Michelin-starred restaurant in London’s Regent Street owned by MW Eats, that has been serving royals, celebrities and politicians for almost a century. Veeraswamy, which has been based in Victory House since 1926, is under threat of closure owing to the property’s landlord wanting to take the building back. The Crown Estate is owned by the monarch “in right of the Crown”. This means that while the King owns the estate during his reign, it is not his private property and he does not manage or make decisions about its assets. The estate pays its profits to the Treasury, which in turn gives a percentage to the royal family in the form of a sovereign grant to fund the King’s official duties and the maintenance of occupied royal palaces. The Crown Estate management said last summer that it would not renew Veeraswamy’s lease because it wanted to extend the ground floor reception area for the offices on the building’s upper floors. In an open letter to The Times, the chefs said that this “would represent a profound loss, both for London’s restaurant scene and for our tourism economy”. The signatories also include Richard Corrigan, who runs Bentley’s Oyster Bar & Grill and the Portrait Restaurant at the National Portrait Gallery, Cyrus Todiwala, Anthony Demetre, Tom Aikens, Phil Howard and Ben Murphy. They want the restaurant’s future to be secured “in its rightful home”. They write that it is “an enduring emblem of London’s cultural and gastronomic strength ... Veeraswamy is an icon of national culinary history”. The Crown Estate said: “We need to carry out a comprehensive refurbishment to ensure the building meets modern standards and is brought back into full use. We understand how challenging this is for MW Eat. Our focus remains on working with all parties and has included offering to help find new premises on our portfolio so that they can continue to be in the West End, as well as financial compensation.”

Safestay to sell Edinburgh freehold for £5.35m, challenging trading conditions have continued: Safestay, one of Europe’s largest hostel groups, has exchanged contracts for the sale and subsequent franchising of its freehold property and hostel, Safestay Edinburgh Cowgate (the “property”), to a private investor for a cash consideration of £5.35m. Under new ownership, the property will continue to operate under the Safestay brand as part of a new ten-year franchise agreement. In June, the company confirmed that it was considering the conditional sale of the freeholds of certain of its UK assets. It said that the net proceeds from the transaction will be used to repay indebtedness, for working capital purposes and to strengthen the group’s balance sheet, supporting the delivery of its long-term growth ambitions. The new franchise agreement marks the group’s second following the agreement which was entered into in August 2025 for two properties in the popular alpine resort of Kitzbühel, Austria. The rebranding of these properties is now complete, with initial trading being in line with management’s expectations. In its interim results announcement which was released on 23 September 2025, the company stated that it was experiencing significant price pressures which were impacting revenue, including through the key trading months of July and August. As a result, the company guided that it expected FY2025’s revenue to be lower than in FY2024. Since the release of that announcement, the company said that the challenging trading conditions and price pressures have continued. The company said: “Against this backdrop, the board continues to focus on maintaining occupancy rates and controlling costs. Additionally, the board is considering various strategic options, including further disposals and/or the sale and leasebacks of certain of the company’s properties and/or an equity fundraising. A further announcement will be made in due course.” Larry Lipman, chairman of Safestay, said: “The sale of our Edinburgh freehold for £5.35m reflects the quality of the property in the group’s portfolio and strengthens Safestay’s balance sheet to support our long-term sustainable growth plans. The new franchise model for the Edinburgh hostel is an attractive one for both parties, providing the hostel owner access to our systems and brand, whilst providing the group with fixed and commission income as well as continued brand exposure in a high-quality, city centre location. More broadly, the trading environment across the European hostel market remains challenging with continued pressures on pricing. Against this backdrop, we are considering a range of strategic options to both support our plans for sustainable growth and crystallise value for shareholders.”