Pub, bar and restaurant closures fall 1.8% in 2019
The lowest rate of year-on-year decline for nearly two years.
Britain’s supply of restaurants, pubs, bars and other licensed premises fell by 1.8% in the 12 months to December 2019, according to the latest Market Growth Monitor from CGA and AlixPartners.
The report revealed that Britain had a total of 116,203 licensed premises at December 2019, which represents an average net closure rate of six sites a day over the last 12 months.
There was also a 2.0% fall in Britain’s total pub and bar numbers, with food-led sites holding up better than community and drink-led locals, which have seen 4,297 net closures since December 2014. Meanwhile, there was a 1.6% drop in total restaurants, but group restaurants (managed sites of operators with more than one location) increased by 1.8% in the year to December. This, per the report, was powered in particular by small to medium-sized group restaurants and openings in Britain’s big regional cities, with Birmingham, Bristol, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Liverpool and Manchester all in net growth year-on-year.
“We are still seeing unsustainable pubs close, but collectively the rate of net number of pub, bar and restaurants closing is slowing. Last year was not easy for some big restaurant brands, but smaller and medium sized brands are bringing new concepts to the market and successfully scaling up. All our research shows that consumers are still eager to go out to eat and drink, and they’ve never had it better for choice,” said Karl Chessell, business unit director for food and retail at CGA.
AlixPartners’ managing director Graeme Smith added: “Overall, the eating and drinking out market remains dynamic and attractive to investors, with this very much in evidence across last year where pubs and experiential businesses took up the slack in investment activity from the more subdued restaurant sector.
"Reduced political uncertainty, more positive recent trading results and encouraging returns when investing in sites, provide a platform for increased M&A and investment activity in 2020 across both wet-led and food-led concepts. However, investors will be looking carefully at what the impact on trading will be from the recent coronavirus outbreak,” he added.
