Family visits to pubs increased in the year to June after but still lagged behind the growth in adult-only visits, according to new research.
The quarterly NPD Pub Tracker showed 0.4% growth in visits with children of all ages and said these occasions accounted for 19.8% of all pub visits over the year. This compared to a 1% rise in adult-only visits. The most recent Tracker, for the year to the end of March, showed a 2.6% decline in family visits and a 1.9% hike for adults.
Visits driven by deals promotions continued to fall, according to the Tracker, with a 5.9% drop.
Weekday visits were up 2%, while those at weekends fell 2.4%.
ABC1 socio-economic groups lost share of traffic both at branded and independent pubs by -0.5 percentage points (pp) and -1.6pp, respectively. ABC1s accounted for 58.0% of branded pub traffic.
Cyril Lavenant, director of foodservice at NPD, said: “In the past 12 months to June 2017, pubs grew traffic at a rate that was slightly behind the wider foodservice market (total OOH 0.7%; pubs 0.4%). The main factor contributing to this slower-than-market performance is the continuing trend of independent pubs losing traffic (branded pubs increased traffic by 1.9% in the year to end of June; independents saw traffic reduce by -2.5%).
“Promotions and meal deals declined by -5.9%, whereas non-promoted visits grew by 3.4%, across both branded and independent pubs. This is a good thing as consumers seem to be less promotion-driven when visiting pubs. However, promotions/deals are more important to pubs (accounting for 29.1% of their traffic) than for the foodservice industry in general (27.7% of traffic). Are the current meal deals and promotions at pubs simply not resonating with consumers enough anymore?
”Both adult-only and family visits are seeing growth (1.0% and 0.4% respectively). This is encouraging as family visits were down in the previous quarter. However, the UK has now recorded its weakest six months of GDP growth since 2012 and this has impacted consumer confidence which, according to one measure, was down to -10 in June. This was the lowest level since the EU referendum results a year earlier. Branded pubs seem so far to have overcome the current challenging economic climate. To maintain traffic growth, the branded pub channel needs to continue listening to consumers to understand exactly what they are looking for. Providing those affordable yet high quality meals with an extraordinary experience will be a key requirement.”
