Business

The government has announced it is to give rural pubs £70,000 in funding to provide new or expanded services. More than 30 rural communities are set to benefit from new or expanded village services from libraries, shops to post offices all delivered by their local pub. The government says the…

Pub group JD Wetherspoon has posted a modest like-for-like sales growth of 5% for the year ending 29 July 2018. The discount pub chain’s revenue increased to £1.69bn from £1.66bn when compared with the previous year. The company’s profit before tax rose to £89m from £76.4m in 2017 and it…

Brewer and hospitality firm SA Brain and Co has joined Hospitality Cymru’s portfolio of high street household licensing names. Hospitality Cymru, part of UKHospitality, was forged earlier this year from a merger between hotels and restaurant representatives, British Hospitality Association (BHA) and the Association of Licensed Multiple Retailers (ALMR). The…

Britain has 3,116 fewer restaurants, pubs, bars and other licensed premises than 12 months ago, according to the latest Market Growth Monitor, from CGA and AlixPartners. The report showed there were 119,800 licensed sites across the country in June 2018 – a fall of 2.5% since June 2017. On average,…

Healthy fast food chain Leon is set to expand into America, opening in Washington next week (week commencing 10 September) with plans to open 20 more US restaurants by 2020. The British company had originally planned the opening of its first US restaurant for 20 August, with the reason for…

Greene King has seen its shares rise this morning following the release of positive sales figures for the quarter which saw like-for-like sales rise by 2.8%. Growth at the company sat at 3.2% for the last ten weeks as Greene King’s local pubs traded well seeing comparable sales rise by…

LGH Hotels Management has announced a new partnership with celebrity chef and restaurateur Marco Pierre White. The deal will see the opening of two of Marco’s New York Italian branches in the Holiday Inn Milton Keynes – Central and Holiday Inn Brentwood later this year. The partnership follows an agreement…

Antica Pizzeria da Michele, dubbed ‘the world’s most famous pizzeria’ for its appearance in the film Eat, Pray, Love has closed. The company’s Baker Street site will continue to trade as normal while it appears that the Stoke Newington site is in fact undergoing a rebrand. Catering Today found a…

Casual dining has continued to grow with visits up 7%, latest figures from global information company The NPD Group have shown. The firm said many operators – especially newer, challenger brands – are continuing to focus on expansion despite high-profile closures and restructuring that some have described as the ‘Casual…

Brexit, coupled with a weaker pound, will push UK businesses to embrace the ‘now economy’ and use technology to plug staffing gaps with temporary workers, digital recruitment platform Adia has said. The group’s new white paper – Future of Flexible Work – Recruiting in the ‘now economy’ – says that…