Eating out in the United Kingdom can entail a great many things. In terms of expensive and boundary-pushing eateries, the UK is certainly not bereft of a fine dining scene,
. It also has a wide range of branded and independent establishments specializing in lower-cost dining options, such as Pizza Express, Toby Carvery, and Nandos, which consistently rank among the
. In recent years, UK restaurants have faced some major challenges, with the COVID-19 pandemic in particular shaking the industry to its foundations. As a result of the pandemic, the
dipped by nearly 10 billion British pounds in 2020 from the previous year, however, this recovered in 2021 and exceeded pre-pandemic levels. The
has also seen steady growth since the lifting of social distancing measures and this is forecast to continue in the coming years.
How many restaurants are there in the UK?
Although the market size of the UK’s restaurant industry has increased in recent years, the story is not one of simple expansion. Namely, the
number of licensed food and drink premises in Great Britain sank from 2022 to 2023, which continued the downward trend that has been nearly continuous since 2017. However, the
number of restaurant and café employees in the UK was seemingly unaffected by this decrease in the number of sites and in fact grew from 2021 to 2022, reaching levels higher than before the pandemic. This suggests that while restaurants have become fewer in number, those that remain have been able to expand their workforce. Meanwhile,
consumer spending on UK restaurants and cafés reached record highs in 2023, reaching over 130 billion British pounds. However, this is not necessarily an indication of consumers dining out more but rather of restaurants becoming more expensive, as seen with the
consumer price index (CPI) of restaurants and cafés in the UK increasing sharply from 2021 to 2023.
Takeaways vs. dining out: what do UK consumers prefer?
Despite the increased costs of dining out, consumers continue to
spend more on restaurants than takeaways, with the average household spending over 12 British pounds a week on restaurant and café meals in 2022 and around four British pounds on takeaway meals. In the context of the
UK’s different income groups spending on restaurant and café meals that year, this worked out at less two percent of the weekly household spend of those in the lowest ten percent decile group and nearly three percent of those in the highest ten percent. Nevertheless, with the economic pressures levied on the UK’s restaurant industry, there has been an
increased tendency among UK consumers to cook for themselves, with nearly half of the participants in a recent survey saying they are eating out less because of financial constraints. Where this leaves UK restaurants in the long-term in unclear; however, it does not appear likely that consumers will completely lose their appetite for dining out any time soon.
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Due to varying update cycles, statistics can display more up-to-date
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