All Bar One owner warns on cost headache as hospitality sector fights to recover after lockdowns
Hospitality firms face a “major challenge” from higher energy and staff costs as they seek to rebuild following the pandemic, bar and pub operator Mitchells & Butlers has warned.
The company behind brands such as Harvester and All Bar One reported a second year in a row of annual losses though said in recent weeks sales had recovered to pre-pandemic levels.
It said demand seen since venues reopened should help it return to profitability but that higher costs – partly blamed on Brexit – would “inevitably” take their toll on financial performance.
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Mitchells said it faced the likelihood of short-term supply chain issues and profit margins looked set to be lower than before the pandemic due to “notable” inflation in food and utility charges and labour costs, as pay is hiked for roles where applicants are now harder to find.
The group, which employs more than 40,000 people across 1,700 sites, was forced to announce 1,300 job cuts last year as reduced trade put its finances under strain.
Results for the company, whose brands also include Toby Carvery and the Miller & Carter steak house chain, showed a pre-tax loss of £42m for the year to 25 September, narrowing from the £123m loss a year earlier.
Sales were down by 9.6% on pre-pandemic levels from two years before with venues closed or subject to restrictions for much of the period and traditional drinking-focused pubs in large city centres worst hit.
Trading recovered towards the end of the period and in the eight weeks since has been 2.7% up on 2019 – thanks to higher spending per head even as volumes of food and drink sold remained lower.
“However, cost headwinds present a major challenge to the hospitality sector as a whole, most notably in utilities and employment costs,” the company said.
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While it was working hard to keep a lid on these, it said “there will inevitably be a residual impact on the current financial year’s performance”.
Chief executive Phil Urban said: “Despite the inevitable challenges faced by our business over the past year we are now well positioned to regain the momentum previously built as we come out of the pandemic.
“The trading environment remains challenging and cost headwinds continue to put pressure on the sector.”
The company said that in the short term “cost pressures are expected to be higher than average due principally to recent escalations in energy costs”.
It added: “Brexit remains an important event for the market and has created risks for the sector, principally around the supply and cost of products and workforce shortages.”
Shares rose 6%.
Richard Hunter, head of markets at Interactive Investor, said: “There is clearly some light at the end of the tunnel and MAB is already seeing the benefits of unrestricted trading.
“The market consensus of the shares as a strong buy indicates a willingness for some to see the current glass as being half-full.”
A millionaires’ playground, Poole in Dorset boasts some of the most expensive properties in the UK, and has been called Britain’s Palm Beach.
Away from the yachts and the mansions of Sandbanks, however, Poole is also a beer drinkers’ paradise, with 58 pubs in the parliamentary constituency alone.
But now many of Dorset’s pub landlords have joined a bitter backlash against rises in business rates of up to £30,000 in Rachel Reeves’s November budget.
Across the UK, it is claimed up to 1,000 publicans have even banned Labour MPs from their pubs, after the chancellor axed a 40% rates discount, introduced during COVID, from next April.
The row over the rises, brewing since the budget, came to a head in a clash between Kemi Badenoch and Sir Keir Starmer in the final Prime Minister’s Questions of 2025.
“He gave his word that he would help pubs,” said the Tory leader.
“Yet they face a 15% rise in business rates because of his budget. Will he be honest and admit that his taxes are forcing pubs to close?”
The PM replied that the temporary relief introduced during COVID – a scheme the Conservatives put in place and Labour supported, he said – had come to an end.
“But it was always a temporary scheme coming to an end,” he said.
“We have now put in place a £4bn transitional relief.”
Mark and Michael Ambrose, father and son co-landlords of The Barking Cat, said the increases are a ‘pub destroyer’
But in the Barking Cat Ale House in Poole, facing an increase in business rates of nearly £9,000 a year, the father and son co-landlords fear the rises could mean last orders for many pubs.
“We’re sort of in the average area at 157%, but we’ve got a lot of local pubs that are increasing by 600%, and another one by 800%,” Ambrose senior, Mark, told Sky News.
“It’s a pub destroyer. Pubs can’t survive these kinds of increases. It’s not viable. Most pubs are just about scraping by anyway. If you add these massive increases your profit margins are wiped out.
“We struggle as it is. You can’t have that kind of increase and expect businesses to succeed.
“Fortunately, the customers understand. But they still don’t want to have to spend an extra 30 or 50 pence a pint.”
Son Michael added: “It’s all back to front. It’s really these bigger pub companies and supermarkets that need to be facing increased taxes. We can’t handle them. They can.”
Michelle Smith, landlady of the Poole Arms, the oldest pub on the town’s quay, dating back to 1635, said: “Our rates per value is due to go up £9,000 in April, so it’s quite a deal.”
Michelle Smith, landlady of The Poole Arms, said all her prices are going up
“And we had a rates increase just gone as well,” she added. “So our rates had already increased over £1,000 a month last April. So another hit is quite considerable really.
“Prices definitely have to go up with all the different price increases that we’ve got throughout: business rates, wage increases, the beer goes up from the breweries. Everything is going up.”
Backing the publicans, Neil Duncan-Jordan, who became Poole’s first ever Labour MP last year, has written to the chancellor demanding a rethink. He said he is prepared to vote against the tax rise in the Commons.
“They’ve got to listen,” he told Sky News.
“They’ve got to listen to the high street, to publicans, people who run social clubs and listen to problems that they’re facing and the impact that these changes have made.”
Mr Duncan-Jordan said he was prepared to support an amendment to the Finance Bill, which turns the budget into law and had its second reading in the Commons last week.
Despite being suspended for four months for rebelling against welfare cuts earlier this year, he said: “I was discussing this with some MPs just this morning and I’ll be happy to support those. Sometimes you just have to say what you think is right.”
As chancellor, Ms Reeves has regularly raised a glass to pubs and promised to protect them from rising costs.
But Sir Keir has faced the wrath of a publican before, when he was thrown out of a pub in Bath during COVID by an anti-lockdown landlord.
This time, without a U-turn by the chancellor on the business rates increases, pub landlords fear the government has them over a barrel.
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