Sixteen Percent in July
The research landed on Monday. CGA by NIQ, commissioned by UKHospitality, the BBPA and the British Institute of Innkeeping, polled business leaders representing more than 15,000 hospitality sites between 19 May and 9 June. The headline: 37% feel optimistic about their business over the next twelve months.
That is a sharp drop from 51% in February, after a solid Christmas and New Year period had closed and operators were feeling the benefit of strong seasonal trading. February's 51% already felt modest. The 37% who remain optimistic by summer look like a smaller group still.
The figure worth sitting with is not the 37%. It is the 16%.
Only 16% of single-site operators, the independent kitchens and neighbourhood pubs and one-room restaurants that make up the bulk of what anyone means when they talk about British hospitality, feel optimistic about their own business over the next year.
The polling ran in late May and early June. As the summer was arriving.
What summer is supposed to do
For most independent operators, the year's economics run on one season. The winter is absorbed. The quiet spring is the quiet spring. Summer is the period that covers those losses and builds the reserves to carry everything that follows.
A kitchen that trades well through July and August earns what it needs to absorb January, to get through the thin weeks of March, to meet the rates bill and the energy standing charge and keep the right people in the building through the parts of the year that will not support themselves.
A summer where only 16% of independent operators feel confident about the year ahead is not a summer doing that work. It is a summer where the fixed costs have climbed past what even a strong season can compensate for, and the people running the rooms understand that clearly enough to say so to a polling team.
What the costs added up to
The confidence data reflects everything that landed in sequence.
The April wage floor rose against a National Insurance increase that arrived the year before. Business rates went through their revaluation this spring, catching venues in food cities when their rateable values had recovered to 2024 levels. Food inflation is now forecast at close to nine percent by year-end, according to the Food and Drink Federation. Energy carries a higher standing charge since April. The sector absorbed close to seven billion pounds in tax increases across the last two Budgets, according to UKHospitality.
None of these costs pause for summer. A full dining room in July pays the same rates bill as an empty one in February. The operators who answered that survey in late May had seen the April bills land. They had a summer coming and they knew what it was up against.
A quarter operating at a loss
The same CGA survey found 23% of hospitality businesses are currently operating at a loss. Three months ago that figure was 15%.
That movement happened heading into summer, not out of it. An operator running at a loss in May and June is running at a loss in the season they rely on to correct the deficit. Some will trade their way through it. Others will not, and the closure figures will reflect it. The 23% number will look different by September, and not all of the change will be in the right direction.
What tonight still asks
The survey is a reading of the industry's forward mood. What it does not change is the service running right now.
The kitchen has prepped. The rota was set before the polling was published and before the data behind it was collected. The fixed costs are committed. The only thing that moves between 4pm and service end is whether the empty seat earns something before the lights go off.
A single-site operator running a room in Brighton, with a team to pay and a rates bill that arrived this spring and a summer that is carrying more weight than any summer should: the question that matters tonight is not the twelve-month outlook. It is the table in the corner that is not booked.
Around 4pm, venues list on Halfseat the tables they expect to lose. Food at half price. Drinks at full price. A real cut of the booking fee going directly to the venue. One cover does not restore a P&L. But the chair that earns something is not the same as the chair that earns nothing.
Summer has arrived. The costs got here first. The rest is tonight.