Strong food sales boost trading for Orchid pub company

29th June 2010, 9:33am

The Orchid Group has announced a 2.7% increase in like-for-like sales for the 14 weeks to 5th June across all its trading pubs and restaurants.

Orchid, which intends to aggressively increase its number of food led businesses, saw like-for-like food sales rise 5.5% and drink sales 0.6% over the period. The company has also seen an increase in gross margins, re-affirming its decision not to enter into a strategy of deep discounting.

Like-for-like sales rose most steeply in invested pubs, reinforcing Orchid's successful 'Project Shine' investment programme. This will see a further 40 businesses invested in this year with capital investment ranging from £10,000 to £250,000.

CEO Rufus Hall is particularly pleased to see an increased movement towards food, with the mix currently running at 44%, up from 41% in 2009.

He explained: "With supermarkets using cheap food and drink deals to drive footfall, a clearly defined strategy for driving quality and innovation in food is now more important than ever. Instead of reducing dish specification we have actually improved the quality of our food across our entire portfolio whilst either holding or reducing the retail selling price. Customers have responded well to this strong stance on reducing the price not the quality; clearly backed up by our strong like-for-like food performance."

Food has always been at the forefront of the business and with a recently opened food development kitchen in Warwick, Orchid says it is now even more committed to driving "quality and innovation".

To add to the success of the Orchid model – a varied portfolio of great individual pubs, bars and restaurants, backed by a strong management team - Orchid plans to add another 50 pubs to its portfolio by the end of 2010, with a further 100 following in 2011.

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