Restaurants, bars, pubs and cafes in the UK were given the official go-ahead to reopen for dine-in business on July 4th. Since then, Tenzo has been tracking restaurant reopening data as well as like-for-like sales of the industry as a whole. Below we break down our findings so far.

69% of restaurants have reopened

Number-of-open-locations



We’ve been tracking 127 restaurant locations that represent the broader industry since March 2nd. At its lowest, only 20 of the locations had their doors open but the number has been steadily increasing throughout the lockdown period. There was of course a big jump the week of June 29th, which included the first Saturday back. This shows that approximately 69% of locations have now reopened – consistent with reopening patterns all over the world.

Like-for-like sales hover around -30%

Average-like-for-like-sales



When it comes to like-for-like sales, we saw sales drop down to almost -70% year-on-year when the lockdown first came into effect. However, those that were able to remain open actually didn’t take too much of a hit to begin with as their omni-channel strategies were already in place. We see those like-for-likes fall again as more restaurants reopened and tested out a delivery and takeaway driven business model for the first time. Since reopening, we’ve seen sales hover around the -30% mark, with gradual improvement week-to-week.



We’ve also seen that around 20% of reopened restaurants have chosen not to open at the beginning of the week, and instead are only getting staff in during the traditionally busier end-of-week/weekend opening hours. It will be very interesting to see how the Eat Out to Help Out scheme changes this. Just one day in, and we’re already seeing successes across multiple businesses with more tables booked and more customers coming in to eat.

Conclusions


Numbers are looking promising as more and more people find the confidence to go out and eat again. Hopefully the Eat Out to Help Out scheme encourages more people to take part in hospitality and support as many businesses as possible.



If you would like to find out even more information about reopening, make sure to tune in to Planday’s webinar on August 11th at 3pm BST. Register here!