Wetherspoon profits from cost control and morning coffee

Wetherspoon has credited cost control and morning openings as being key factors in helping to see it through the cloudy economic climate. . Tim Martin’s company said that its recipe for robustness had been a mixture of cost controls, financial efficiency and an increased range of sales.

The value-for-money pub chain reported an increase in pre-tax profits of 13.6% to £66.2m in the year to 26th July. The company’s cost-cutting measures ranged from reducing the amount it spends on management jobs, to using in-house cleaners and even reviewing its table-decorations policy. It also installed smart meters to help managers to monitor electricity use in their Wetherspoon pub or Lloyds No. 1 bar.

On its sales side, Wetherspoons kept punters flowing through the door at non-traditional pub hours by opening early and serving 715,000 breakfasts and coffees each week. On the alcohol side, its real ale sales rose 17%. More controversially, its beer offers have seen pints being sold as cheaply as 99p. Tim Martin responded to criticism of this by saying that tax and regulation costs had generally pushed up the price of drinking in a pub and that comparatively cheaper off-trade products had had the knock on effect of fuelling ‘unsupervised’ drinking.

The Morning Advertiser reported that Wetherspoon is looking at buying more second-had pubs and opening more outlets in smaller towns. Overall, Wetherpoon’s takings grew 1.2% in the year to 26th July.

14 September 2009