(Reuters) -Britain’s J D Wetherspoon on Wednesday flagged higher-than-expected losses for the current financial year as labour and fuel costs continue to weigh on its bottom line.
Pubs and restaurants, which had to battle COVID-19-led restrictions for the last two years, are now struggling against rising labour and fuel costs and a fall in customer spending as Britain deals with inflation which is at a 40-year high.
J D Wetherspoon, which owns and operates over 800 pubs throughout the UK and Ireland, said sales of its largest contributors, draught ales and lagers, were 8% below 2019.
The pub group, often referred to simply as “Spoons” by its younger customers, said its like-for-like sales for 11 weeks of its fourth quarter were 0.4% lower compared with the same period in 2019.
The group, which had said in May its profit would break even this year, now expects to report an annual loss of 30 million pounds ($35.69 million).
($1 = 0.8405 pounds)
(Reporting by Sinchita Mitra in Bengaluru; Editing by Krishna Chandra Eluri)
