PUB giant Mitchells & Butlers, owner of The Horseshoe Bar in Glasgow, has reported falling half-year profits after taking a hit from the Brexit-hit pound and soaring wage costs.
M&Bs said profits fell almost 10 per cent to £75 million in the six months to the end of April, despite a number of measures put in place to mitigate the effects of rising inflation.
Boss Phil Urban said: "Margins have been adversely impacted by increased costs, most notably from wage inflation, property costs and exchange rate movements.
"In order to partially mitigate these costs we have been working hard to encourage our guests to trade up and increase spend per head for a more premium experience whilst challenging our general managers to run their businesses as cost effectively as possible."
The group also noted that wholesale food inflation increased six per cent in March and said that it has carried out "some price adjustments", including increases and reductions, as a result.
In better news, like-for-like sales at Mitchells rose 1.6 per cent in the period, with overall sales growing 2.4 per cent to £1.2 billion.
Mr Urban added: "Overall, we are pleased with the turnaround in our sales trajectory and relative performance against the market. In a challenging cost and consumer environment we will continue to focus on our three priority areas."
M&Bs is in the process of overhauling its pub estate, targeting more upmarket brands.
The group has launched Sizzling Pizza & Carvery and Sizzling Pub & Grill in an attempt to fight back against new competition in the eating out sector.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here