Roasting heat putting Brits off roasts, warns Toby Carvery owner
The sweltering summer heat has put Brits off their roasts, one of the UK’s biggest pub companies has warned, after the country set a fresh June temperature record.
The owner of Toby Carvery, which offers year-round roast dinners and has more than 100 sites across the country, reported a 2.4 per cent drop in food sales over the past three months, compared to a 2.6 per cent rise in drink sales, as parched customers swapped out sliced turkey for pints of Moretti.
“The exceptional heat adversely affected our food-led businesses, particularly Toby Carvery,” said owner Mitchells and Butlers.
But the company, which also owns Nicholson’s, Harvester and All Bar One, said it had seen a boost in drinks sales during the World Cup.
Overall turnover has climbed modestly so far this year, up 1.3 per cent compared to 2025.
Mitchells & Butlers shares sunk as much as 4.4 per cent to 263p in early trading on Thursday. The stock is largely unchanged since the start of the year.
“Our business has performed with resilience during a quarter characterised by unusual weather patterns,” chief executive Phil Urban said.
“The strength of our diversified portfolio has moderated the impact of external factors.”
JD Wetherspoon issues profit warning
Falling food sales at Mitchells and Butlers comes in the same week another major pub group, JD Wetherspoon, issued its fourth profit warning of the year as it grapples with surging food and energy costs and a rising business rates bill.
Tim Martin, founder and chairman of the UK’s best-known pub chain, said: “Profits for the year are likely to be below market expectations, with marginally lower sales than anticipated in the final quarter, combined with higher costs in the areas of food, labour, repairs, energy and business rates.”
Shares in the FTSE 250 pub chain fell by more than nine per cent on Wednesday’s market open, to 686p, leaving the stock down seven per cent in the year to date.
This is Wetherspoon’s second profit warning in three months, as rising energy and supply costs caused by the Iran war threaten the pub chain’s famously thin margins. The group’s £70m pre-tax profit target was already far below last year’s £80m.