The Covid-19 pandemic is expected to reduce casual dining spend in the UK by more than £20bn this year. This is triggering a fundamental restructuring of the sector and the property market which serves it. Operators have found themselves with overheads that are too high, margins which are too low and a target market which is nervous about a return to eating out on the scale which prevailed prior to the pandemic.
In our research paper – Can the UK find a new appetite for eating out? - we look at the sector’s trajectory prior to Lockdown and how it can begin to ‘right-size’ itself in the face of the new customer attitudes and economic realities brought by the pandemic.
