What the ONS business counts say about UK hospitality

ONS business counts for UK hospitality from 2010 to 2021, and what they say about food versus drinks venues.

The number of registered hospitality businesses in the UK kept rising through the pandemic. On ONS business counts the total went from 181,150 in 2019 to 191,800 in 2021, which is not what the headlines suggested.

Stampede and storekit went back to the same ONS source used for Stampede's 2019 report on pub and bar numbers, to see what the disruption had done to registrations. The counts come from Standard Industrial Classification codes 56101, 56102, 56103, 56210, 56290, 56301 and 56302, which cover restaurants, takeaways, cafes, mobile food stands, catering businesses, clubs, pubs and bars registered at Companies House.

Licensed club figures include discotheques, nightclubs, social clubs and working men's clubs that hold an alcohol licence.

Food businesses grew almost across the board

Between the March 2019 and March 2021 counts, every food category grew. Takeaways and mobile food stands grew the most in absolute terms, from 40,170 in 2019 to 43,235 in 2021. Licensed restaurants went from 35,105 to 36,035, unlicensed restaurants and cafes from 30,135 to 32,375, and event catering recovered from 15,535 to 19,525 after dropping as low as 12,300 in 2015.

The one category that moved backwards is other food service activities, which covers airline, school, university and office catering. It rose from 13,650 in 2019 to 16,985 in 2020 and then fell to 15,780 in 2021. A category that feeds people who are not travelling, not at a desk and not on campus was always going to do that.

Pubs, bars and clubs went the other way

The drinks side did not share in the growth. Public houses and bars fell from 39,145 in 2019 to 37,865 in 2021, a net loss of 1,280 on the ONS counts. Licensed clubs fell from 7,420 to 6,985 over the same two years, and from a high of 10,040 in 2010.

Neither decline started in 2019. The 2019 pub and bar count was a small upward blip in a decade of falls, and the two years after it took the trend back down.

Drinks-led venues also had the least to fall back on during the restrictions. A restaurant can put a box on a courier. A pub whose trade is a crowded room on a Friday night cannot, and neither can a club.

What the counts do and do not tell you

A business count is registrations, not trade. It says how many companies sit under those SIC codes, not how many are open, how busy they are, or whether they are making money. A venue that shut its doors in 2020 but stayed on the register is still in the 2020 figure.

Read the direction of travel as the signal and any single year as noise. Across the decade the pattern is food up, drinks down, total registrations up.

To talk to Stampede or storekit about the data, email contact@stampede.ai.