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Foodservice re-opens with ‘Super Saturday’
Wednesday, 29 July 2020
For some ‘Super Saturday’ was the day they had been waiting for, the appeal of beer on tap and restaurant food enticing them back out-of-home, but for some it will take more time to feel confident venturing out.
Early signs of market recovery
After 2 full weeks of post-lockdown operations in England and the first few days of re-opening in Scotland and Wales, CGA, a leading data agency for pubs, bars and restaurants, have reported that 60% of on-trade premises are now open. So far pubs are faring better than restaurants, with the latter being more cautious about re-opening. Sales remain well below pre-COVID norms with w/c 13th July like-for-like sales in sites trading down 31.6% on the same week last year. However, this is an improvement on the first week of re-opening which was down 39.8%, highlighting that a recovery is going to be gradual.
Coffer Peach Business Tracker, w/e 18th July 2020, trading figures for pub, bar and restaurant group's latest weekly data.
High street footfall figures show that commuter towns and cities are recovering more quickly than cities with a high concentration of offices and a reliance on public transport. Footfall in London, Edinburgh and Cardiff is less than 30% of normal levels pre-coronavirus while high streets in Basildon, Birkenhead and Chatham have seen a much stronger footfall recovery.
For more detail on how quickly certain high streets in the UK’s largest cities and towns are recovering in terms of footfall, take a look at the CentreForCities tracker.
The eating-out market is an important channel for food sales. For instance, 21% of beef volumes go through eating-out, 15% of lamb, 14% of pork and 13% of potatoes. We know over half of foodservice visits include dairy. Due to its importance AHDB will be tracking how the reopening of foodservice affects demand for these sectors. However, these initial figures support the view we took in the Agri-market outlook that recovery would be slow.
More insights will be published as data becomes available.
