Friday Five: the week's top news
- Bunga Bunga, Maggies and Cahoots operator Inception Group has secured a £6.7m loan from OakNorth Bank to continue to help fund its expansion. OakNorth initially provided refinance and expansion facilities to Inception Group in January 2018, and further supported the group during the pandemic. The £6.7m capital will extend existing facilities the business has with the bank, as well as fund the opening of new sites.
- Unite union has launched a petition protesting PizzaExpress’s plans to slash hours for hundreds of its waiting staff and hand their duties over to restaurant managers, garnering support from thousands. The petition, which calls on PizzaExpress to abandon its new 'labour management scheme', has so far received more than 4,000 signatories. First announced last week, the cut to waiting staff’s hours will be before 5pm, with the additional workload handed to salaried managers, who will receive no extra pay. Unite has claimed that affected staff could lose up to five hours of work a day, which would mean a cut of £260 per week without tips for those over 23 years old, on minimum wage, and working five days a week.
- The Restaurant Group (TRG) has said it will keep its remuneration policy ‘under active review’ after more than a third of investors voted against it at the group’s AGM. A group of activist investors, led by the Hong Kong-based hedge fund Oasis Management, had been piling pressure on TRG in recent weeks, calling on the beleaguered casual dining chain's fellow shareholders to vote against its remuneration policy. However, at TRG’s annual general meeting this afternoon (23 May), both the remuneration policy and remuneration report for 2022 passed having gained the approval of 65% and 54% of shareholders, respectively. TRG, which operates the Wagamama, Frankie & Benny's and Chiquito restaurant brands, noted in its AGM report that ‘a significant minority’ did not support the remuneration resolutions, and pledged to keep the policy ‘under active review’ going forwards.
- UK hospitality employees received an average pay rise of 9.5% in the last year, compared to the national average of 6.6%. The latest Hospitality Hiring Insider report from recruitment platform Caterer.com shows the highest pay rises are being seen across London, the North West and those working in pubs. A record number of hospitality jobs on its website are offering a salary of more than £50K, with over 1,700 currently listed. Pub employees received the highest pay rises compared with any other area of the hospitality sector at 11.3%, which increases to 11.8% for those in entry level roles, compared with 10.8% for those in senior and experienced roles. Employees working in entry level roles within bars received some of the highest pay rises at 11.6%.
- Hospitality turnover in the last year was down 14.7% compared to pre-pandemic levels when accounting for inflation, according to new figures provided by UKHospitality. The UKHospitality Quarterly Tracker, in association with CGA, shows that the revenue generated in the last 12 months is 4.1% above pre-pandemic levels, but remains ‘significantly below’ the like-for-like sales required to keep up with inflation. Turnover across the sector has also contracted by 0.3% in the first quarter of this year, compared to the same period in 2022.
For more of this week's headlines, click here.
