Pubs in UK fail to extract anticipated spends from consumers
New research from on-trade researchers him! found that the amount of time and money that consumers anticipated spending when going into a premises fell short of actual spend when the same customers were questioned on leaving by researchers for the company’s latest OnTrack report.
The same finding applied to food spend where actual spend on food totaled £9.34 as opposed to anticipated spend at the start of £10.98 and spend on drink was £8.42 against an anticipated spend of £8.96.
The average per capita spend on food and drink was £12.13 and £9.33 respectively.
Actual spends and times spent in the pub appeared consistently below those anticipated by consumers.
Where consumers anticipated spending an average of 86.6 minutes there, they actually only spent an average of 82.2 minutes.
However the good news is that customers appear to be visiting their pubs more frequently, with visits rising from 1.4 per week to 1.8 although average spend on food and drink per visit has fallen.
As the same number of drinks are bought – 2.7 on average – this suggests that consumers are spending less per drink which can be put down to smaller measures, cheaper brands or brands on promotion.
Apart from competing with each other, pubs now have to fight the rest of the leisure industry for every pound spent, pointed out Katy Moses, Sales Manager at him!.
“Pubs must make the focal point of the experience the elements that cannot be found in the off-trade to keep customers coming to pubs,” she concluded.
