Black Friday's restaurant spending up 4.2%: Visa

Hotels, Restaurants & Bars saw solid increases in expenditure during November.

Mark Antipof, chief officer - commercial at Visa, said, “The gap between the performance of e-commerce and the high street widened again last month. Bricks-and-mortar retailers saw sales down for the seventh consecutive month, while e-commerce continued its upward growth trend, boosted in particular by consumers taking advantage of online promotions around Black Friday.

Annabel Fiddes, principal economist at IHS Markit, said, “Data broken down by sector meanwhile revealed a relatively broad-based reduction in expenditure, suggesting that households are cutting back on an array of goods and services. However, Hotels, Restaurants & Bars (+4.2% on the year) and Misc. Goods & Services (+4.9%) posted solid increases in spend, to provide the only two pockets of growth.

The latest Visa UK Consumer Spending Index data indicated that consumer spending declined for the third month running in November. On an annual basis, total expenditure fell by -0.9%, which was less severe than the -2.1% reduction seen in October, but nonetheless kept spending on track for its weakest calendar performance for five years.

The sharpest decline was seen in Transport & Communication categories.