The pub chain JD Wetherspoon has reported its highest Easter week sales and busiest-ever Saturday, with cash-conscious drinkers searching out cheaper options amid the cost of living crisis.
Wetherspoon’s, which runs more than 830 branches across the UK and Ireland, said it had benefited from a rise in sales in the past two weeks, both of which included bank holiday weekends.
It described the first weekend, when the bank holiday on 1 May fell, as being “exceptionally strong” for trading, with its “busiest-ever Saturday”.
However, Wetherspoon’s said last weekend, including the coronation of King Charles, was slightly less busy in its pubs, and reported last Saturday as being “noticeably quiet”. The company suggested that many customers might have bought alcohol at supermarkets to consume while watching the ceremony at home rather than in hospitality venues such as pubs and restaurants.
The group said it expected to achieve record sales for the current financial year, after the recent strong trading levels, while it predicted its annual profits would be close to the highest level expected by the financial markets.
It said like-for-like sales were 12.2% higher in the 13 weeks to 30 April 2023 compared with the same period a year earlier, and were 12.7% higher overall so far this year.
The pub chain’s sales are stronger than they were before the pandemic, with like-for-like sales over the 13 weeks to the end of April this year 9% higher than the same period in 2019.
The company reported that it now employs close to 1,000 more workers than it did before Covid, with a current workforce of just under 43,000 people.
Wetherspoon’s has opened three pubs so far this year, while 21 venues have been sold, closed or returned to the landlord, providing the company with a new cash inflow of £4.7m. The company said most of the pubs it had closed were smaller and older, or where it had a second pub nearby.
The upbeat sales report marks a change in fortunes since late 2022, when Wetherspoon’s said it was closing venues amid a slow recovery in trading after the pandemic and associated lockdowns and in the face of “substantially higher” costs, including labour and food costs.
Tim Martin, Wetherspoon’s chair, said lockdowns and Covid restrictions had resulted in “more profound and longer-lasting consequences than most economists, politicians and commentators predicted”.
He warned that despite the “positive momentum” in sales, inflation in food, energy and labour costs remained a “more intractable issue”.
Weeks after Martin warned it could be “catastrophic” for pubs and restaurants to hold off raising prices amid soaring costs, he called on politicians to “encourage free enterprise” to tackle inflation rather than relying on introducing new regulations.
