Like many operators in the hospitality sector, we’ve spent the last year operating somewhere between reality and the Twilight Zone. Countless hours of senior management time have been swallowed up trying to reorganise and adapt to changes being thrust upon us by the current government.

 

Having seen the impact first-hand, and having listened to and read everything doing the rounds, one harsh reality keeps coming back: we have a government that does not understand business, does not understand hospitality and – most worryingly – does not understand the difference between a small independent operator and the huge pubcos that dominate our sector.

 

That last point is the most dangerous of all. As a wave of cost pressures bear down on us, it is the beating heart of our industry that risks being crushed and lost forever. I have nothing against the big players, but when government policy is designed, it seems blind to the fact that our pockets differ enormously. 

 

What is a minor departmental trim for one business is the total loss of a livelihood – and a home – for another. The thought process must change before it’s too late.

 

“Change”. A word that will haunt many businesses for years to come. A government elected on a promise of change has certainly delivered – depending on your perspective. Higher national insurance, higher wages, higher taxes, inflation – the list goes on.

 

What bothers me most is not just what is happening, but what we are allowing to happen. We are being addressed with the word“support”. How dare the government says it recognises we need support. It’s akin to breaking our arm and then suggesting we might benefit from a plaster cast.

 

What hospitality needs is not support – it’s understanding. Understanding of how our margins actually work. Understanding that our sector has been a piñata for years, battered by outdated, unrealistic and unfair taxes and regulation. And now, having arrived late to the party, the government has taken one final swing –removing the last remaining sweets as we burst.

 

Our sector doesn’t just need a tweak to business rates; it needs total realignment. We need a government that recognises the desperate position many operators are in due to a one-size-fits-all mentality.

 

Hospitality is not a level playing field. Like the Premier League, Championship and Leagues One and Two, the financial clout across our sector differs massively. If you want to understand the bigger picture, you must first accept that reality.

 

I urge our trade bodies to challenge the rhetoric around “support” and remind government that what we want is change for the better – not change that destroys businesses.

 

We don’t want charity. We want fairness, so we can continue to deliver jobs, growth, and profit. Oh, and what comes with that is extra tax! It’s time for the trade bodies to wake up and smell the coffee before the coffee gets cold!

Friday Opinion readers, cast your minds back to last year, when Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy met with US president Donald Trump in the Oval Office to discuss repelling the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine. It became the meeting where Zelenskyy received a dressing down for not dressing up and was then unceremoniously dismissed from the room in full view of the world. That meeting.

 

Dear Donald,

 

Thank you for being the catalyst for positive change in the UK hospitality sector. Last year, you publicly humiliated Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the Oval Office. For many watching, including me, it was an unmistakable, faultless example of how power can be misused, and how easily authority turns into bullying.

 

You spoke down to Zelenskyy. “You don’t have the cards,” you told him. You interrupted him. You publicly humiliated him. You framed the whole meeting with the line, “you have to be thankful”, as if Zelenskyy was being ungrateful.

 

Enter JD Vance, playing an absolute blinder as a supporting bully, seamlessly making an already extremely awkward situation just that little more awkward. And then boom, out of nowhere. Brian Glenn, the chief White House correspondent, comes in with: “Why don’t you wear a suit?’ Do you own a suit?” Wow.

 

When compared with the Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service (ACAS) definition of bullying, the behaviour you, Vance and Glenn displayed in the Oval Office ticked every box. It was a full house.

 

ACAS says: “Bullying is unwanted behaviour from a person or group that is intimidating, humiliating, offensive or malicious.” And how quickly normalised misuse of power and bullying can escalate to the next level, eh Donald? But I am grateful I watched every painful moment of the encounter you referred to as “great TV”. I will explain why in a moment.

 

Witnessing your intimidating, humiliating, offensive, malicious, unwanted and totally pathetic behaviour was the catalyst I needed to write a column for Propel Friday Opinion on a subject of great importance to me – the misuse of power and bullying in the UK hospitality sector.

 

After the column was published last year, the most incredible thing happened. I was inundated with messages like these. “Thank you for putting your head above the parapet”, “I will stand shoulder to shoulder with you” and “Thank you for shining a light on hospitality’s dirty little secret”. People – lots of people – came forward, offering to help change hospitality for the better. That response is why I am grateful I watched your bullying masterclass.

 

From those who came forward, a strategic advisory board was formed, made up of 12 hospitality professionals including a neuroscience expert, a hospitality company founder and an executive coach – all of whom have agreed to give time freely to create “The Good Apple Effect”.

 

The Good Apple Effect will be a movement waking hospitality up. We will be the catalyst for breaking the silence around bullying and giving people the tools and confidence to speak up, step in and improve the culture of our sector.

 

The completed paperwork for the formation of a not-for-profit community interest company is with our solicitors, and we have held our first strategic advisory board meeting.

 

Also giving their time and advice is a former self-confessed bullying chef who is now gloriously reformed and reaping the benefits. Alongside him are three hugely respected industry figures who act as ambassadors and advisors. Strategic alliances with the Licensed Trade Charity and Hospitality Action have been formed and the branding is done. We will officially launch later in 2026.

 

As I witnessed at Propel’s Culture, Talent and Training Conference, so many people are already doing so much to eliminate the misuse of power and bullying in the sector, reaping the rewards that better behaviour brings to people, customers and business. The “Good Apple Effect” applauds them, and later in 2026 we will be going full pelt, with serious gusto, to support you all.

 

Right now, Donald, the UK hospitality sector does “have the cards” – the cards to make positive cultural change – and that is exactly what is happening.

 

Best wishes to Melania.

 

Elton

Hospitality isn’t heading for a single moment of disruption. It’s moving through a structural reset. By 2026 and beyond, the brands that win won’t be the loudest or the most novel but the most intentional, designed for new patterns of appetite, attention and control.

These are not predictions built on hype. They are signals already visible in guest behaviour, operating models and platform power. The question for operators is no longer what’s changing, but how quickly they adapt.

GLP-1s (injectable medicines used increasingly for sustainable weight loss) and wellness-led living no longer sit at the margins. They will structurally rewire appetite. Smaller portions, fewer calories and more deliberate choices become the default, not the exception.

This is not a diet trend; it is a behavioural reset. The opportunity is to make less feel premium. Portion architecture, satiety-driven language and functional signals like protein, fibre and lower sugar allow guests to eat less without feeling deprived.

Commercially, this becomes a margin strategy. As volume softens, guests on appetite-suppressing or wellness-led journeys increasingly trade down in portion size while trading up in perceived quality. Less food, done better, protects margin while aligning with emerging behaviour.

As ordering, planning and logistics continue to automate, the value of human service will rise, not fall. In 2026, technology will be expected to remove friction entirely. What guests will remember is what machines can’t do – warmth, intuition and care delivered in the moment.

The next era of service is not about efficiency theatre, but emotional intelligence. Let technology eliminate friction so teams can focus on welcome, guidance, pacing and recovery. Guests rarely remember what they ordered, but they vividly remember how they were made to feel when something went wrong. In an automated world, human judgement becomes the luxury signal.

Looking ahead, hospitality polarises. Guests increasingly demand extremes: frictionless speed or an experience worth leaving home for.

What erodes fastest is the “pretty good, sort of nice” offer that’s neither fast nor memorable. By 2026, guests will routinely trade convenience for speed or convenience for meaning but rarely pay for both unless the experience is clearly tiered and pre-sold.

Experience will no longer be a vague promise. It will be engineered through immersion, story, design, sound and performance, packaged into clear tiers tied to occasion. Brands that continue to tweak the middle won’t stand still; they’ll slowly lose relevance.

The next phase of platform consolidation is not coming, it’s already underway. We are entering an era when platforms and reservation systems will function less like utilities and more like toll roads.

Through mergers, acquisitions and closed ecosystems, control of discovery, booking, payment and customer data is being centralised. The commercial impact is subtle but compounding. Operators increasingly pay repeatedly for access to the same guest: first for discovery, then for booking, then again for retention.

The real risk isn’t dependency; it’s cumulative margin erosion and the slow transfer of ownership of the guest relationship, in-venue and at home, echoing the hotel industry’s experience with over-the-air in the 2010s – a battle many hotel groups are still fighting to regain control from today.

During 2026, “better for you” as a moral proposition will be obsolete. The more health is preached, the less effective it becomes. The future lies in engineering function quietly into familiar food. 

Blended proteins, fungi and functional ingredients will deliver taste, satiety and value without asking guests to change identity or behaviour. Health that whispers will outperform health that lectures. Adoption will come through familiarity, not ideology.

Volatility isn’t a temporary phase. Over the coming years, supply disruption and cost pressure will remain structural realities. The response won’t be more optionality, but less.

Shorter menus will continue to outperform, not because they restrict choice, but because they feel intentional. Designed for flexibility and built on ruthless cross-utilisation, simple menus stabilise buying, reduce waste and protect execution when supply breaks. This isn’t cost cutting. It’s operational leadership in an uncertain environment.

The sustainability conversation is maturing beyond storytelling. It will only add value when it improves the product itself. Guests won’t pay more for slogans. They will pay for flavour, provenance and resilience they can taste.

Regenerative farming, transparent sourcing and real farmer partnerships become premium signals, forcing menus to be designed around credible, resilient ingredients. Sustainability that doesn’t show up on the plate won’t survive scrutiny.

8. Code in the kitchen

Through 2026 and beyond, artificial intelligence and digitisation will underpin nearly every layer of hospitality: reviews, menus, labour, forecasting, pricing and loyalty. The most effective systems will be invisible to guests but transformational for teams.

Their role is not spectacle, but relief. Reducing operational load so people can focus on presence, judgement and care. The advantage will belong to operators who use code to eliminate friction, hardwire consistency and give teams back the time to actually host.

Across all these trends, one signal is clear. The future of hospitality is not about more choice, more technology or more noise. It’s about clarity. Clarity of offer. Clarity of experience. Clarity of who owns the guest relationship. Clear decisions about whether you are fast or fantastic, automated or human, rented or owned.

The brands that succeed beyond 2026 won’t chase trends. They’ll design for less, execute with intent, focus on value and protect the human moments machines can’t replace.

 

Once the Christmas festivities died away, I started 2026 with a driver safety awareness course, one of those rare moments where the state actually allows us to choose education over punishment. The key statistic that stuck with me the most was that the majority of road accidents are caused by distraction and not ignorance, deliberate rule breaking or just inattentive driving. 

 

This feels like a great metaphor for running a hospitality business in recent times. Gone are the days when success was just about operating better than your competition. Now we must contend with seemingly endless distraction, often creating the illusion of progress when one is actually standing still. 

 

Each December at Prestige Purchasing, we hold an event in London for hospitality operators to reflect on the year just gone and consider the challenges and opportunities in the year ahead. It’s called the FPI Annual Briefing (Foodservice Price Index). At our most recent event, the presenters and interviewees painted a picture of radical change underway – laced, as always (in recent years), with huge levels of both risk and opportunity.

 

I genuinely believe the quality of leadership within the hospitality sector is outstanding, but more than ever, we will be challenged in 2026 to be clear-eyed and decisive in the face of more change than I can remember in my 50-plus years in the sector. So, let me share some evidence for this. 

 

Karl Chessell, director – hospitality operators and food, EMEA at NIQ, spoke of a slowdown in the significant rate of net closures within hospitality since the pandemic but stressed that the market is still shrinking. There are more than 20% less outlets trading now compared with 2012. Independent operators are struggling to even make a profit with almost 60% of this cohort not generating cash, even though they raised 2025 prices on average almost 3% points more than groups did. 

 

Perhaps most concerning was his analysis that tracked operator confidence in their own business against consumer confidence levels. For years, these lines on the graph tracked pretty much side by side, but in the past year, consumer confidence has gradually risen while operator confidence has fallen significantly. I will return to this later, but suffice to say that increases to taxation – first in national insurance contributions and latterly in business rates – are threatening the viability even of previously very strong businesses. 

 

Of comfort in Karl’s briefing was his conclusion that the fundamentals of the hospitality market are still quite robust. There are some encouraging signs that visit frequency is now in revival, and while like-for-like sales remain fairly flat, the market as a whole is in growth, driven by new site openings. Consumers still love hospitality, it seems, but building emotional connections and delighting customers with the whole experience remains the key differentiator for the market’s leading operators.

Hospitality is around 30% of a food and agriculture sector that contributes £153bn to the UK’s wealth – more than 6% of the economy. And Shaun Allen, Prestige’s chief executive, was keen to draw attention to the fact that the UK now imports 42% of the food it consumes (24% from EU and 18% from elsewhere in the world). Over the past 30 years, the food system has industrialised, with 61% of our calories coming from 12 crops and 14% from five animals – that’s 75% of our calories from 17 core ingredients. This has delivered huge increases in efficiency, but not without costs and risk.

 

Between the beginning of 2022 and the middle of 2023, food inflation (year on year) rose from below 5% to above 20%, and then took another year to return to more stable levels. Food purchasing prices are now 50% higher than they were in January 2020, and in recent times, FPI has begun to climb once again. Prestige forecasts an increase in food inflation by 1.7% points between 2025 and 2026 to 4.6% (average January to October).

 

During the 2022-2023 surge, driven by geopolitical and post-covid supply chain challenges, every category increased dramatically in price, but by 2025, the pattern of price fluctuations became much less uniform, with large increases in beef, fish, dairy and oils, yet sizeable falls in areas like olive oil and wheat. 

 

At a more macro level, food and drink are greater strategic risks to hospitality operators than at any point in living memory because of climate warming, the geopolitical impact on trade and the impact of environmental legislation – all of which are factors that will increase in intensity in the years ahead. 

 

At the same time there are dramatic changes underway within the whole food system, particularly in the UK. These include:

-  Increasing legislation on the sale of unhealthy foods

-  A growing consumer pushback on ultra-processed foods

-  Productivity enhancing artificial intelligence investment in the area of food and drink production

-  Reduced diner calorie intake due to GLP-1 drugs (forecast to be used by 20% of the population by 2030)

-  An increasing understanding of gut biome damage from specific foods

 

All of these will deliver changes that are likely to put the food system front and centre of hospitality business board agendas. 

 

Within a fascinating download on the state of the hospitality sector with Kate Nicholls, chair of UKHospitality, she summarised the position as follows:

 

“There is a fine line here between talking continually about the damage done to our sector and how that becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Because why would anybody want to invest, work, live, start a business or work in hospitality if we are seen to be a dying sector? And effectively, government is an institutional investor when it comes to the Treasury – why would they give support if we are talking about structural damage?

 

“That said, a third of the sector is reporting that it's operating at or below breakeven. A quarter have no cash reserves. So, we are going to go through structural realignment. Clearly, we are going through some of the same issues that we saw in retail, where we are grappling with high labour costs and looking to change the model to manage that cost base. 

 

“But keeping it light and positive, you’ve still got the highest household savings ratio since covid. Consumers have money, they just don't feel confident enough to spend. Inflation will start to come down. Interest rates have been signalled to start coming down. People do have more disposable income as wages have risen. We should take heart from the fact that people do want to come back out to eat and drink. It is a mature market. We will be as eternally inventive and dynamic as we have always been in responding to challenges.

 

“I think we will get a more resilient sector in a few years’ time. There will be pain, but as a result, you will find better invested, better managed, better developed businesses. I’m an eternal optimist. I think our sector continually innovates and will be responsive to managing that process. It is a very tough macroeconomic and geopolitical climate, but it can’t stay as bad as this forever. And we will come out the other side stronger.”

 

If you would like to receive an invitation to the 2026 FPI Annual Briefing, please email stuart.read@prestige-purchasing.com