Wetherspoons to sell more bars as it battles rising costs

JD Wetherspoon is to put seven more pubs on the market this week after warning of the impact of rising costs.

The group revealed slowing sales and said it is facing “substantially higher” costs.

The chain saw like-for-like sales drop 1.1% in the five weeks to November 6 when compared with pre-pandemic trading in 2019, having risen by 1.5% in the previous nine weeks.

Compared with a year ago, sales rose 10.1% in the first nine weeks of its financial year and were 8.9% higher in the past five weeks.

It said trading was “broadly” in line with its expectations but that October had been a slower month.

“Costs, especially in respect of labour, food and repairs, were substantially higher” in the first quarter, the group added.

Northern Ireland-born Wetherspoon chairman Tim Martin said the firm remains “cautiously optimistic” despite the cost pressures hammering the hospitality sector.

Bars have been badly impacted by soaring pirces, staff demanding higher wages and waning demand among cash-strapped pub goers.

Mr Martin warned last month that the group is facing a “momentous challenge” to persuade punters back into its bars after they got used to drinking cheap supermarket beer during the pandemic.

It came as the firm said last month that sales rose from £773 million to more than £1.7 billion in the year to the end of July, but were still behind the more than £1.8 billion the company made in 2019.

Wetherspoon cut annual underlying pre-tax losses from £167 million to just £30.4 million, though it made a profit of £132 million before the pandemic struck.

The chain only has a handful of bars in  Northern Ireland and in April  called time on its years-long battle to open a super pub in Belfast city centre.

In 2014 it bought the four-storey former JJB Sports premises in Royal Avenue, next door to CastleCourt shopping centre, hoping to cash in on the influx of 15,000 students at the new Ulster University campus.

However after running out of patience over planning permissions and licensing it decided to sell it along with the former Methodist Church on University Road, which it acquired eight years ago.