Casual dining offsets pub closures to keep leisure venues stable

The rise of casual dining has made up for pub closures to keep the number of drinking venues steady despite tough market conditions.

There were 122,783 licensed premises in the UK in September a rise of less than 0.1% from a year earlier. The number of drink-led pubs fell 2.3%, continuing a long-term trend. But the number of restaurants rose by 1.6% to keep overall numbers stable.

The figures, the most recent compiled by CGA and Alix Partners, indicate a resilient performance by the licensed trade amid rising food prices, squeezed consumer budgets and uncertainty over Brexit. They also show the trade responding to changes in leisure habits as families spend more on eating out together.

Campaigners such as JD Wetherspoon founder Tim Martin have called for the government to ease taxation on pubs to help them compete with cheap supermarket prices. Wetherspoon has responded to changes in the market by serving a wider array of food, breakfast and upmarket coffee.

Marston's, the brewer and pub operator, has been converting its pubs into casual dining venues to tap into the trend for eating out on a budget. These pubs are included in the survey's wet-led pubs figures despite their emphasis on food.

Peter Martin, vice president of CGA, said the lines between pubs and restaurants were blurring, making categories less relevant and the overall number of premises more important.

"Food and drink is being leveraged together. Often a pub may look like it's food-led but the main sales are still from drinks. For the consumer it doesn't really matter whether it's a pub or a restaurant. They say 'It's somewhere I want to go.'"

Martin said restaurants and food-led pubs were benefiting from the so-called experience economy as consumers prioritise leisure such as eating out and weekends away over buying material goods. Growth of restaurants in the past year was led by entrepreneurial start-ups and medium sized operators looking to become big brands, the research found.

"The market isn't growing but overall it's still healthy because people are still going out to eat and drink in more straitened times," Martin said.