While it means that at-home sales have now risen for 19 months in a row, the latest number is well short of November’s growth of 6.2% and marks the Tracker’s lowest point since March.
For the first time in 2024, it fell slightly below the UK’s general monthly rate of inflation of 2.4%, as measured by the Consumer Prices Index.
The Tracker suggests that December’s figure may reflect consumers’ shift towards going out rather than ordering in over Christmas as their spending confidence increased.
“After 11 months of real-terms growth for deliveries and takeaways, December’s slip below inflation was a disappointing end to 2024 for restaurant groups,” says Karl Chessell, CGA by NIQ’s director – hospitality operators and food, EMEA.
“But the flipside of the coin is that many consumers were confident enough to head out to celebrate rather than stay in.”
As reported earlier this month, the CGA RSM Hospitality Business Tracker shows that Britain’s leading restaurant groups saw ‘muted’ year-on-year growth of just 1.6% in December, with pubs benefitting the most from the uptick in festive sales.
A breakdown of CGA’s Hospitality at Home Tracker indicates 2.2% like-for-like growth in delivery sales, while takeaway and click-and-collect revenue was flatter at 1.4%.
Total delivery and takeaway sales — including from sites opened in the last 12 months — rose by 10.3%.
“As more of their economic pressures ease, we can be cautiously optimistic about growth in both channels in 2025, but the mounting burden of costs for hospitality groups will put pressure on margins for some time to come,” Chessell adds.
