Pubs and restaurants suffer festive flop as Christmas sales slump
Pubs and restaurants were plunged into festive misery as tough Covid-19 lockdown restrictions prompted a slump in sales in Christmas.
UK boozers and eateries saw total sales drop by almost three-quarters during what should have been the sector’s busiest trading period of the year.
Drink-led pubs and bars were worst hit, with sales down 83.7 per cent and 87.2 per cent respectively in the five weeks to 3 January.
Managed food-led pubs and pub restaurants were down 78.2 per cent, while group-owned restaurants saw total sales drop 57.9 per cent, according to the latest Coffer Peach Business Tracker.
“Hopes that Christmas and New Year would help at least part of the market recoup a little of the income lost earlier in 2020 were dashed when the government started to impose increasingly severe tier restrictions across England in the run-up to the Christmas break, with further prohibitions for New Year, on top of the restrictions in place in Scotland and Wales,” said Karl Chessell, director of CGA, which produces the report.
London, which was largely open at the beginning of December, fared marginally better than the rest of the country. Sales in the capital dropped two-thirds, compared to 74 per cent outside the M25.
“The tier system had already kept pubs and restaurants across large parts of the country closed from the start of the month, but the escalation of measures saw the sector effectively grind to a total standstill by the end of December, even before January’s return to complete lockdown,” Chessell added.
The figures showed that just over half of the country’s managed pubs, bars and restaurants were trading again after November’s lockdown. By the end of December this number was below 10 per cent.
Earlier this month the government announced that retail, hospitality and leisure businesses will receive a one-off grant of up to £9,000 to help survive the latest lockdown.
But industry chiefs warned the funding would do little to compensate for Christmas losses and called for business rates relief to be extended beyond the end of March.