September ‘disappointing for UK on-trade’

Insights firm Oxford Partnership’s on-trade tracker covered the four weeks to the end of September.

The figures did show a glimmer of positivity with an increase in consumer dwell time of 3.1%. This was a marginal rise of 1.3% compared to the same four weeks in August.

However, occupancy levels were down by 3%, a larger decline than in the four weeks to the end of August, suggesting the miserable weather in the ninth month of the year played a big part in keeping people at home.

Furthermore, the total number of trading UK on-trade outlets in the year to date to September showed an overall decline of 0.4%.

Meanwhile, outlet opening hours continue to be down and this was a further 1.5% drop from August but the year-to-date figure was relatively flat.

The insights firm was optimistic for the coming weeks though as it revealed as outlets started advertising Christmas​ in early September, there is anticipation for a strong end to 2024.

Consumer spending

It cited credit card data from Barclays, which showed a small increase in consumer spending across pubs and bars of 0.6%​ while restaurants fared better with a 1.4% rise.

Compared to the previous month, this represented a small drop for pubs and bars of 2.6% but substantial growth for restaurants of 18.3%.

The report also revealed draught beer continued to decline with craft leading this with a volume drop of 13.2%.

Craft beer was the topic of the latest Lock In podcast​, where operators including Craft Beer Co founder Martin Hayes, Five Points Brewing’s Ed Mason and Northern Monk’s Russell Bissett shared their thoughts on the market.

Elsewhere in Oxford Partnership’s research, core lager also reported a volume drop of 8.5%. However, there were two exceptions to this trend with world lager up 2.9% and stout continuing its upward trend with a 17.5% increase, driven by the final week of the month where it was up almost a quarter (24.3%), giving the segment a 10% uplift against the previous month.

The data followed research from the latest edition of the CGA RSM Hospitality Business Tracker, which found managed hospitality groups recorded year-on-year sales growth​ of 1.7%, meaning managed operators achieved like-for-like increases in eight of the nine months of 2024.

CGA added while this was a “welcome improvement”, the statistics demonstrated the continuous challenges in achieving real terms growth as the sector enters the crucial final quarter of the year.

Sales growth

Total sales growth in September, including new venues opened during the past 12 months, was up by 3.7%.

Moreover, according to CGA data, early September sunshine boosted drinks sales​ in the seven days to Saturday 21 September, which were 3% ahead of the same week last year.

This followed two weeks of negative numbers with sales down 5% the previous week​ and 12% during the same period before that​.

More recently, CGA by NIQ’s Daily Drinks Tracker showed year-on-year drinks sales fell for the third week in a row​.

The research illustrated average sales in managed venues in the week to Saturday 12 October.

October 2023 benefited from warm weather across most of the country and the closing stages of the Rugby World Cup – both of which brought consumers out to pubs and bars in large numbers.

The latest numbers continued a difficult run of negative numbers in nine of the past 12 weeks.

Sales were behind on five of the seven days of the week, falling between 6% and 16% from Sunday to Tuesday (6-8 October).