JD Wetherspoon continues to be the dominant pub brand in terms of share of visits but Farmhouse Inns tops the rankings for average customer scores, data from MCA has shown.
The Pub Brand Monitor for Q3 2018 shows the most improved performance coming from All Bar One, which increased share at every daypart.
The research shows that half of pub customers visited a JDW pub in the year to September 2018, although this was slightly down on the previous year. The brand accounts for 27.9% of pub lunch occasions, up by 1.5 percentage points, while diner visits grew by the same rate, capturing 21.7% of the total share.
Despite a slight drop in prompted awareness, JDW remains the leading brand for this measure, followed closely by Harvester, Beefeater, Toby Carver and Brewers Fayre.
All Bar One boasted the biggest breakfast share improvement, up 1.5pp year-on-year, to 6.3% of pub occasions and it has achieved growth at lunch, adding 1.2pp to 2.5%, while its dinner share has increased 1pp to 2.3%.
Meanwhile, Beefeater has improved on every KPI in Y/E September 2018, growing most for friendly service, up 0.3.
The Pub Brand Monitor, which includes a detailed breakdown of performance by brands across all dayparts and KPIs, found that overall pubs have lost their top spot at lunch with coffee shops and supermarkets to-go growing.
Lunch occasions in pub restaurants have decreased by 0.9pp to 16.4% while food-to-go accounts for 37.5% occasions in comparison to 34.4% in Q3 2017.
Pub visitors have been spending more on their breakfast occasions, up 8% to £6.74, three times greater than the c.2-3% menu price inflation. Pubs have succeeded in maintaining high perceptions of good value at breakfast, which has aided growth in pub’s breakfast occasion share, despite higher visit spends.
The pub restaurant channel was the most popular at dinner, after an unchanged year-on-year performance, while its share of snacking visits has grown by 0.3pp since Q3 2017.
To find out more about the research and other MCA data, please contact insight.enquiries@mca-insight.com
