Upham Group, the brewer and pub operator, saw gross pub sales on a like-for-like basis grow 6.5% to £2.3m in the five trading weeks to 31st December 2017.
New Year’s Eve was the highest grossing sales day in Upham’s history, taking £112,000, and the week from Christmas Day to New Year’s Eve marked the first time that sales exceeded £500,00 in a single week. The Weighbridge Brewhouse in Swindon took the top sales spot over the festive period, followed by The Navigator in Lower Swanwick, Southampton.
This strong performance was driven largely by food sales of just above £1.2m, with drink sales topping £0.8m. Bedroom occupation was also relatively high for the time of year, accounting for around 13% of total pub revenue.
The brewery successfully launched Upham’s new craft beer UB5, selling over 4,000 pints in December.
Upham revealed the following festive season numbers:
• 6,460 Christmas lunches and dinners served in December
• 10,161 pints of Punter pulled in Upham pubs over the period
• 1,326 glasses of prosecco sold on New Year’s Eve
• 128 Bloody Marys drunk on New Year’s Day
• 83,880 pints of beer sold by the brewery in December
• £123,000 of non-alcoholic drinks
• 177 staff working on Christmas day
• 116 5-star reviews via social media channels in the period
• £1,200 raised for the “Born Too Soon” charity via Upham’s fundraising page
Chief executive Chris Phillips, said: “This strong Christmas performance rounds off a good year for the Upham Group, despite a difficult trading environment for the sector. 2017 was a productive year, in addition to pursuing our pub acquisition strategy, we also launched our first ever craft beer, which continued to sell extremely well throughout December. I would like to thank the teams at all our pubs for their fantastic Christmas menus, as well as the rest of our staff who made this such a successful few weeks. We enter 2018 with good momentum, and look forward to welcoming even more customers over the course of the year.”
