Bar and restaurant group Mitchells & Butlers warned that problems caused by Brexit and rising costs will hurt Hospitality It’s like companies returning to profitability after the pandemic restrictions were relaxed.
The company owns bar chains including O’Neill’s, and catering brands such as Harvester. Brexit It is still an “important event in the market” and has brought risks to the industry, especially in terms of product supply and cost, as well as labor shortages. It said higher energy bills and increased employee salaries also put pressure on the industry.
Mitchells & Butlers-which also operates All Bar One, Toby Carvery and Miller & Carter-when customers start to return to their 1,600 locations in the UK Lockout restrictions have been relaxed in spring. Its sales rebounded in August and September, and it is now accepting bookings for Christmas parties.
In announcing its annual results, the group stated that transactions in its suburban locations are better than those in the city center, continuing home work This means that people have visited local branches rather than near the workplace. In recent months, passenger traffic in major cities has been slowly increasing, and the company expects this trend to continue.
The organization stated that after the pandemic restrictions, people in bars and restaurants wanted to interact with others in a way that they could not interact with others at home, because it reported that the pre-tax loss for the year ended September 25 was 42 million pounds, compared with 123 million pounds in the same period last year.
Mitchell and Butler Said that it has returned to profitability in recent months, and similar sales in the past eight weeks are 2.7% higher than the level before the outbreak.
The company’s chief executive Phil Urban said that the Christmas reservations for its venues started later than in previous years, but reservations are now being made, even though this year’s party looks smaller than in previous years.
“We see bookings in cities and suburbs, in all our portfolios,” he said.
“We have some large venues, especially in London, that can hold some large parties, and we may rarely see so far. A company came in and said that we can take your entire venue to one night. But it doesn’t. It’s not that they will not be replaced by people hosting small parties. We encourage bookings.”
On Wednesday, the wine and spirits company issued a warning there It may be a shortage of alcohol in the UK During the festival, due to Lack of heavy truck driversMitchells & Butlers said it has several mid-size Mercedes-Benz Sprinter trucks on standby, ready to pick up goods from the warehouse if the truck misses a delivery.
“We have a product in the supply chain, but either the supplier cannot deliver it to the warehouse, or it cannot be shipped from the warehouse to the site. This is a localization problem. The problem is that we don’t know where it will be until it does not appear ,” Urban said. He added that in some cases, he was able to send trucks to the warehouse to collect supplies, “instead of waiting for our logistics to reschedule.”
Mitchells & Butlers stated that it is working to offset the impact of rising costs, but warned that this will have a residual impact on performance for the current fiscal year.
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Higher utility bills are still a concern for the company, and it must also pay more salaries to employees from April next year because they benefit from “National Living Wage” Rise“For workers 23 years and older, £9.50 an hour.
In the case of rising costs, the company called on the government to extend Temporarily reduce the value-added tax rate Food and sales of non-alcoholic beverages are currently 12.5%, but due to Return to the level of 20% before the epidemic April next year.
The company said that in the year to September, the value of the temporary tax cut for the business was 81 million pounds.
