Weekly Briefing Report Week ending 9 August 2020

Published 10 August 2020

Introduction

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My insight

The challenge for the thousands of suppliers to the foodservice sector – they include food, drink, equipment, janitorial supplies and much more – is to process the huge changes that the sector has experienced since the start of lockdown, and meld that with the vast amount of information that is being provided by the media, social media, zoom conferences and much more.

Anybody who is involved in the foodservice sector will be quick to point out that it is not a single sector but an array of distinct markets. And perhaps the clue to resolve the challenge is to unpack each of these markets separately. In doing so, it seems important to me to have a view about two things. The first is the time frame one is considering; and the second concerns the trajectory of coping with the coronavirus. For the purpose of what follows, I am working in the context of a two-year time frame, say to the end of 2022. And I am also assuming that, by then, ways will have been found to cope with covid, on a day to day and a month by month basis. As I say, this is the context of what I have to say which concerns the more immediate term for the major markets within foodservice.

Public services are likely to carry on much as before covid, perhaps on a slightly smaller scale due to some shrinkage of population in prisons and the armed forces. The health care sector is also likely to carry on much as before perhaps with a tad more expenditure on feeding patients and staff. Education is subject to more uncertainty. I suspect primary schools will revert to the prior position as swiftly as possible; but the same cannot be said of secondary and tertiary education where online teaching is likely to take bigger role than before. Within B&I, the “Industry” component is probably going to find its feet again albeit at a lower level than before (at least until manufacturing makes up the ground lost during lockdown). A recent report from Morgan Stanley suggests that only 34% of UK white collar workers have returned to work, compared with over 70% in France. This underlines that, for now, “Business” has been severely impacted by working from home. It seems reasonable to assume this will continue.

Other sectors I should talk about include leisure and hospitality, restaurants and pubs; I intend to cover these in next week’s report. 1

The numbers

I had not wanted to return to Eat Out to Help Out (EotHO) until the results are in. But I have been pushed to comment on it now following a BBC phone-in I took part in last Thursday. The central thesis put to me was that while the government is investing £0.5 billion in the scheme, some rich MPs (Jeremy Hunt was mentioned) have been tweeting about the fact that have saved £50 on a family restaurant meal via the EotHO. I suspect that was to demonstrate solidarity with the restaurant sector and to encourage consumers to eat out once again, but the implication was the government shouldn’t be subsidising the rich – it should be spending the £0.5 billion on aid for the poor.

Whatever the political points made for the scheme (and I did my best) or against it, it seems rather a shame that what is intended to be a really positive move to kickstart a struggling sector had been presented in a negative light. And this made me think a bit more about how the scheme has been promoted. While some restaurateurs have praised the scheme and recorded promising uptake, the overall pattern of promotion seems to have been to ride on the coattails of the government’s efforts. While laudable, this may not be enough. There are many anecdotal stories to support this – I came across a restaurant that only started promoting the scheme on Wednesday – when it had started two days earlier (and there are only 13 days in total for the scheme), and I have found that many people are unaware of the scheme. More should be done to maximise take up and kickstart trade. Google - indexed searches on Google Trends

In the meantime, I was 100 struck by this chart from EOtHO 80 Google Trends which + suggests that while enquiries for EOtHO (in orange) are 60 up, this is at the expense of a downturn in searches for 40 delivery (in green). This may 20 not translate directly into the real world, but it suggests 0 that any gain for restaurants 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 may be to the detriment of delivery businesses. July August

Meanwhile here are the latest numbers from OpenTable and the Huq Index which has been improved to make it even more responsive to changes in consumer behaviour:

August 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Metric Huq 34.5 32.4 26.2 27.0 22.2 19.6 Footfall vs 6-26 Index Jan 2020 = 100 Open 10.0% 5.0% 10.5% -30.7% -20.1% -14.8% YoY % change in Table bookings

The remainder of this Weekly Briefing Report contains a summary of financial, legal, and corporate activity in the past week. The relative lack of news this week perhaps indicates that we are returning to some normality.

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Financial / Legal

• Preston was subjected to renewed lockdown • Leicester restaurants and pubs to reopen for the first time since imposition of lockdown in March

Foodservice

• Over 72,000 businesses signed up for Eat Out to Help Out scheme

Landlords

• Legal & General offers performance related leases • Hammerson collected 34% of rent due at end June

Restaurants

• Frankie & Benny’s reopens 15 sites for dine in • Shoryu Ramen reopens site • The Real Greek reopens 15 sites • Paul UK reopens 23 sites for dine in • Byron reopens is 20 sites (down from 51 pre-CVA) • Patisserie Valerie reopens 20 sites for dine in • The Clink launches click and collect meal kits • Loungers LfL sales down -1.7% since 4 July • YO! appoints Deloittes to explore possible CVA • Framptons reopens two sites • Fulham Shore LfL sales -28% down on last year in the four weeks since post lockdown reopening

QSR

• Pret closes 17 more sites (47 in total) in USA • Shake Shack launches burger kit ready to cook at home • Dunkin’ Brands to close 350 sites outside the USA • Morrisons cafes offers Eat Out to Help Out throughout the week

Pubs

• Revolution Bars reopens 9 sites • BrewDog sales in central -74% down on pre-covid levels; -34% in England; -28% in Scotland • Country Pub Group put into administration • Northern Ireland pub reopenings reversed until earliest 1 September

Hotels

• Hotel occupancy levels in London were 32% at the end of July

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Leisure

• EasyJet flew 709 flights in the April to June period, compared with 165,656 in the same quarter in 2019 • Puttshack reopens one site

Delivery

• Gousto delivered 5 million meal kits in June, twice the figure for January 2020 • Competition and Markets Authority clears way for Amazon investment in Deliveroo

Around the world

• California restaurants open for outside seating only • Israel closes bars and nightclubs • Ireland delays reopening of bars and nightclubs until earliest end August • US Foods Holding Corp sales fell -29.2% to $4.6 billion in the first half of 2020

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