Inflation, RBG, Restaurant Group, holiday plans, WFH & other:

A DAY IN THE LIFE:

Here’s a question, then: Q: How do you know when your sometimes-oh-so-adult 15yr old is still a kid at heart?

A: When you find a Christmas list that covers more than one side of an A4 piece of paper and, to add insult to injury, where virtually every word ends in an ‘s’.

Thankfully, mobile phone wasn’t one of those words. And I’ll permit socks, shoes and jeans but T-shirts, books, Nando’s vouchers, vinyl LPs and a whole host of other words most definitely were to be found in the plural suggesting that, if anything, I’ll have to go some to come up to best expectations this time around.

Anyway, enough of that. On to the news:

LANGTON EMAIL:

The Free Email is now written in short form. Full stories are in the Premium Email. Reply to this email if you would like to upgrade.

See Twitter for in-day comment. Let us know if you would like an example of the Premium Email or to comment on the new format.

Prices for the Premium, unchanged for 2yrs, are £295 for one subscription, £495 for multiple, both plus VAT. Reply to this email to order & request invoice.

Or sign up for easy in, easy out monthly option HERE

PUBS & RESTAURANTS:

Inflation:

News of cost & price increases is everywhere and yesterday was no exception. Bank of England governor Andrew Bailey told MPs he was “very uneasy” about high inflation. But not enough to do anything about it and he had previously said it was transient. Mr Bailey says of high inflation that it is ‘not of course where we want it to be, to have inflation above target.’ He denied the UK was in for a bout of 1970s style inflation.

• See premium. Reply to this email to upgrade.

See today’s CPI news under Finance & Markets below.

• See premium. Reply to this email to upgrade.

Zoopla has announced that rents are rising at their fastest pace since 2008. They are up 4.6% in the year to September with rises of 6% outside London. Rents in London, which were tracking down 10% early this year, are now up 1.6% on a rolling 12mth basis.

Bloomberg commented on inflation in the US yesterday and said it wasn’t transient.

The BBC points out that ‘job vacancies hit a fresh record high in October as employers continued to struggle with worker shortages’. See also Finance & Markets below. The rate of unemployment fell. This isn’t the environment in which, as Mr Bailey suggests, you can pay a certain wage to attract new staff without succumbing to demands to pay your existing staff more.

• See premium. Reply to this email to upgrade.

Yesterday, Revolution Bars reported full year numbers and said that it has done well ‘against the challenging backdrop of the reopening of hospitality, where there is a shortage of available workforce and input cost pressures across the supply chain.’ More on Revs, Premier Foods & Restaurant Group comments.

• See premium. Reply to this email to upgrade.

Lidl is reportedly set to increase pay from March next year, which it says will make it the UK’s highest-paying supermarket. The BBC says ‘it will increase its minimum pay for employees outside London to £10.10 an hour, with rates of up to £11.40 for more experienced workers.’ There is little chance that the other supermarkets will stand by and lose staff. They may have to raise rates as well.

City centres / working from home:

Colleague Nick Bubb yesterday picked up on comments from major landlord Land Securities that ‘we estimate that approximately 17% of all retail floorspace in the UK is currently surplus to requirements, which we expect to rise to 25% by 2025’.

• See premium. Reply to this email to upgrade.

COMPANY & OTHER NEWS:

Restaurant Group’s shares were remarkably strong yesterday, finishing up some 13.3p or 16.8% at 92.6p.

• See premium. Reply to this email to upgrade.

Sky reports that the ‘owner of the sushi restaurant chain YO! is kicking off talks with prospective buyers following a string of takeover approaches for the Japanese food specialist.’ This comes just a week after The Sunday Times reported that a potential IPO was now  off the table.

• See premium. Reply to this email to upgrade.

The Competition & Markets Authority is ‘consulting on proposed undertakings in lieu of a reference for the completed acquisition by Admiral Taverns of the Hampden Pub Estate.’ It will take comments until the end of this month. The CMA had said on 9 November 2021 that it ‘considers there are reasonable grounds for believing that the undertakings offered by Admiral, or a modified version of them, might be accepted by the CMA under the Enterprise Act 2002.’

The Pub Governing Body has published its second annual audit report for Scotland. It says this has been ‘conducted in what has been an unprecedented 18 months due to the Covid-19 pandemic’ and covers the period 1st August 2020 – 31st July 2021. The Board says it ‘is pleased to see that in its second year since the formation of the Scottish Pub Governing Body, figures are in line with previous years and show there remains a high level of compliance in Scotland.’

• See premium. Reply to this email to upgrade.

Cask Marque, with the support of the National Brewers, has created an e-learning training course for bar staff, “Beer Professional”. It says ‘the purpose of the course is to improve the customer experience and give staff the knowledge to confidently recommend a beer brand or style to a guest and the opportunity to upsell and demonstrate their professionalism and knowledge.  It also helps staff retention.’ Cask Marque adds ‘in the first year the cost will be just £30+VAT covering 10 learners’ for the 30 minute course that is available on a mobile, tablet or PC. Paul Nunny, founder of Cask Marque, says ‘bar staff are such an important part of delivering a great customer experience in pubs. Now we have set standards that allows bar staff to be more professional and rewarding in terms of job fulfilment.’ He adds ‘already Thwaites, Stonegate and Punch have committed to roll out the
training programme.’

A number of trade bodies including the SBPA, UKH, the NTIA and SLTA has said that up to 75% of Scottish hospitality businesses could close permanently if the country’s Covid passport scheme was extended to pubs. The trade bodies say ‘Covid certification has a hugely negative impact on businesses already caught by the policy and any extension will have a devastating impact on the wider hospitality sector. Three quarters (76.2%) say they would not survive without further economic support from Government, should the policy be extended.’

Revolution Bars yesterday said that ‘as a result of the successful vaccine rollout, we see vaccine passports as an unnecessary administrative burden on businesses that will not have a significant positive impact on increased health outcomes.’ It adds a plea for rates reform and says it is seeing ‘a shortage of available workforce and input cost pressures across the supply chain.’ It adds that a ‘test site for our fourth brand will open in November 2021, offering a competitive socialising experience, and we couldn’t be more excited to see our guests reaction to this new offering.’

Molson Coors Beverage Company has reported that its hard seltzer, Three-Fold, is to be available in the UK on-trade with the launch of a draught variation. It says the launch comes after UK sales increased by a factor of 8x over the last year. The company says ‘we continue to invest and innovate with this brand and the new draught version is a great way for our on-trade customers to introduce hard seltzer to their venues.’

The Inn Collection Group has begun work on a multi-million pound refurbishment of its Tyneside venue The Park.

Indian street food chain Mowgli is reported to have hired hired advisers to find a new backer to fund expansion. The Times reports that the group is believed to have appointed PwC ‘to help assess its options for refinancing the minority stake held by Foresight Group.’ It says ‘Foresight, a private equity investment manager, made a £3.45 million investment in 2017 when Mowgli only had three outlets. It now has 13, and last week opened its first site in London at a former Côte restaurant in Fitzrovia.’

McDonald’s Corp in the US is reported to have negotiated new deals with two of its third-party delivery platforms, DoorDash and Uber Eats. The company has announced it will be integrating McDelivery into its mobile smartphone app. McDonald’s says that as it ‘expands customers’ ability to order delivery directly through the McDonald’s app, DoorDash and Uber will be preferred and trusted partners in fulfilling these orders in thousands of McDonald’s restaurants in the U.S. and globally.’

Non-alcoholic drinks company Lyres is reported to have raised £20m in its last funding round.

Oatly shares fell sharply as the Sweden-based oat milk company said it was losing sales due to the investigation of a ‘quality issue’.

LEISURE TRAVEL & HOTELS:

Online agency Thomas Cook is reported to have agreed access to beds with bed-bank Youtravel.

Royal Caribbean International says it is deploying a second ship out of Southampton.

Manchester Airports Group has announced that it handled 2.7 million passengers in October, some 51% of pre-pandemic traffic compared to the same month in 2019. Manchester had 1.2 million passengers, Stansted 1.3 million and East Midlands over 213,000 passengers.

The Meetings Industry Association reports that the UK business meetings sector has been severely impacted by staff shortages and supply chain problems. It says 87% of some 157 UK venues surveyed said they have job vacancies. Respondents were looking for waiting staff, receptionists, housekeeping and kitchen workers.

Qatar has put the UK on its ‘red list’ of countries due to high Covid numbers.

FINANCE & MARKETS:

The ONS has this morning reported that the Consumer Prices Index excluding owner occupiers’ housing costs (CPI) rose by 4.2% in the 12 months to October 2021, up from 3.1% in the 12 months to September.’ This is a sharp enough rise to make the headlines and to cast doubt on the Bank of England’s decision last week not to raise interest rates. More on constituents of the rise.

The sometimes used CPIH, including owner occupiers’ housing costs rose by 3.8% in the 12 months to October 2021, up from 2.9% in the 12 months to September.’ This is a sharp enough rise to make the headlines and to caste doubt on the Bank of England’s decision last week not to raise interest rates. The inflation rates in both cases are now at levels last seen in the back end of 2011. More on constituents of the rise.

• See premium. Reply to this email to upgrade.

The ONS yesterday reported that unemployment across the UK had fallen again despite the end of the furlough scheme. The jobless rate fell to 4.3% in the three months to September. Some 1.448m people were out of work, a drop of 152,000. There is a possibility that some workers made redundant at the end of furlough will currently be working their notice.

• See premium. Reply to this email to upgrade.

Sterling up at $1.3419 and €1.1877. Oil lower at $81.66. UK 10yr gilt yield up 4bps at 1.00%. world markets mixed yesterday. London set to open down around 31pts as at 7am.

RETAIL WITH NICK BUBB:

• See premium. Reply to this email to upgrade.