The face of the pub industry has changed considerably in recent years, with long-term declines in alcohol consumption affecting pub visits and driving operators towards focusing on their food offering to reduce their vulnerability to drinking trends. Now the share of pub visitors who think it important that pubs offer high-quality food (46%) surpasses those who think that pubs/bars are an important part of the community. Brands continue to be refined with an increased focus on specific targeting in order to avoid the pressurised middle ground.
Operators are increasingly tapping into all-day dining opportunities by expanding the number of meal occasions they cater to. Americanisation of menus has also continued as has the expansion of world cuisine on pub menus as operators look to ensure that they are meeting demand for something different to in-home meals.
Definition
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.
Value figures throughout this report are at retail selling prices (rsp) unless stated otherwise. Market sizes at constant 2013 prices are devised using Mintel’s food deflator.
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