Hospitality sales grew 5.6% year-on-year in the latest 12 weeks, ‘optimising price, mix and menu architecture is more important than ever’

Hospitality sales grew 5.6% year-on-year in the latest 12 weeks, according to analysis from HDI, the leading provider of card spending insight and pricing data to the UK hospitality sector.

Pizza delivery, fast food & takeaway, and coffee & sandwich venues were the best performing sectors, all seeing double-digit growth over the 12 weeks ending 31 October 2023, with delivery sales close behind with growth of 8.2%.

Pubs & restaurants saw low single-digit growth, with the casual dining sector sales declining by 2.2%, according to analysis of HDI’s panel of 10.2 million unique customers.

Mark Bentley, business development director at HDI, said: “We’re continuing to see headline inflation easing, with average prices versus 6 months ago up by 3.4% on food and 4.6% on drinks from our tracking of more than 165,000 like-for-like site/item combinations in pubs & bars.

“However, it’s been very notable that average transaction values have typically not increased at the same rate as headline inflation, with consumers managing their own personal inflation rates very effectively.

“With further inflationary pressures still to come, maximising spend per occasion through optimising price, mix and menu architecture is more important than ever for operators.”

HDI’s panel tracks more than 160,000 individually identifiable hospitality venues across 350 different brands and formats, with their pricing data covering c.15,000 hospitality venues and all major grocers.