Sales of meals in pubs grew by 2% in 2015 to £7.2 billion. The large size of the market stems from the almost universal appeal of pubs, 83% of people having visited these to eat either during the day or the evening. The majority of people who eat at pubs though do so only once a month or less, meaning one of the challenges for pubs is increasing frequency of visits.

The number of pubs has been declining, with those that relied on sales of alcoholic and soft drinks more likely to have disappeared. While a greater focus on food has proven to protect many venues, the eating out market is extremely competitive and pubs are not just competing against one another but also against a range of other eating out establishments. This means there is a need for a strong food offer that compares favourably with restaurants for quality and value.

To maximise sales more, pubs are now going beyond the peak lunchtime and evening trade and introducing breakfast/brunch menus, as well as a stronger hot drinks and snacks offer throughout the day. With so much competition, continuing menu development and regular offers remain vital, as does good customer service and increasing engagement with pub visitors using both traditional and digital marketing activity.

Pub catering is defined as covering meals of any kind sold in public houses, with the exclusion of any drinks and also excluding packaged snack products (eg crisps, nuts, pork scratchings).

All pubs (public houses) and bars have on-trade licences to serve alcoholic drink for consumption on the premises. These licences may also be granted to other outlets, such as hotels or cinemas, but a pub has at least some traditional characteristics that differentiate it from other bars.

Licensed restaurants are excluded from Mintel’s definition of pub restaurants, as are hotels for which drinks form only a part of the overall business. Other premises, which may have full on-licences but are not generally open to the public, including licensed clubs, a variety of leisure venues and college bars, are also excluded.

Some important terms connected with the pub business are:

• Tenanted or leased pubs are run as businesses by independent publicans who pay rent to the owner of the property and also contract to take supplies from the property owner’s company. The supplies mainly only involve beer, this system dating back to the origin of most pubs as ‘tied’ houses controlled by brewers. The modern multiple pub-owning company (a ‘pubco’) usually has no formal connection to a brewer.

• Managed houses are pubs that are owned and managed by the same company; not leased out to an independent publican. Most pub restaurants that operate as part of a group of such pubs are managed houses, often still owned by brewers or by ex-brewing companies (eg Whitbread, one of the many brewers that sold its breweries in 2001).

• A free house has no contract to a specific pubco or brewer, and is run as an entirely independent business.

• Gastropub is an unofficial term for a pub that employs a chef and aims to compete directly with restaurants on innovative cuisine.

• Wet sales refers to the proportion of a pub’s turnover from drinks (sometimes confined to alcohol), while the term dry sales refers to food turnover.