Beverage Standards Association

13/10/2026

Shift in Delivery Platform Costs

This week's Briefing opens with a shift that matters to anyone who orders in or sells through the delivery platforms. The self-employed rider model that kept prices low is under pressure from right-to-work checks, HMRC reporting and a government consultation on employment status. Enforcement has arrived before the law, and the likely result is fewer, better-vetted riders and higher costs showing up in fees, menu prices or longer waits. I also revisit a prediction I made in 2021.

In The Numbers, I've mapped this year's overseas restaurant openings and found two very different pictures: newcomers cluster in central London, while earlier arrivals are heading to Glasgow, Hull and Nottingham. The difference is more about format than nationality, and it raises an uncomfortable question about what the rest of Britain is importing.

This week's Briefing opens with a shift that matters to anyone who orders in or sells through the delivery platforms. The self-employed......

09/10/2026

Who Owns British Eating Out

Think of the last chain restaurant you ate at: there's a fair chance it's no longer owned by anyone in Britain. Wagamama answers to Apollo, Cosy Club's parent belongs to Fortress, Franco Manca sits inside a Japanese group and Pizza Pilgrims has been folded into a German one. This week I look at why it's happening, what it means for where brands open next and where the profits end up. I also ask which of our most promising names will still be British in ten years.

The Numbers story may unsettle you. After three years of tracking what hospitality operators tell the ONS about their own risk, I've tested it against what actually happened and the answer is, that it told us almost nothing. If you lend to, supply or invest in this sector, the findings should change what you watch for.

Ten years ago, I wrote a report explaining why pub food would be much harder to sell on delivery apps than pizza or burgers.................

02/10/2026

Pub Food & Delivery Apps

Ten years ago I wrote a report explaining why pub food would be much harder to sell on delivery apps than pizza or burgers. This week, Greene King's Hungry Horse brand quietly started testing exactly that.

In this issue, I dig into:

- Why pubs make their money on drinks, not food, and what that means for delivery margins
- The three obstacles I flagged back in 2017 and how Hungry Horse's trial design seems to answer each one directly
- A very different approach some pub groups are taking instead, treating the pub as a kitchen rather than a brand
- Why the real question isn't whether this trial works, but whether it creates new trade or just moves existing trade into the home.

Ten years ago, I wrote a report explaining why pub food would be much harder to sell on delivery apps than pizza or burgers..................

22/09/2026

Similarities More Striking than Differences

Walk down a high street in Manchester, Munich or Milan and the similarities are more striking than the differences. That is not only a point about chains. Independent operators have converged too: the coffee shop with exposed brick, filament bulbs, and oat milk on the counter as standard; the burger place with the same off-white tiles and the same smash patty; the bakery with the same laminated pastry in the same glass case. We are told we have more format choices than ever, but at street level we see a handful of designs repeated in town after town.

The familiar complaint is that variety has been lost. It seems to me that this is the wrong reading. Variety has not been lost. It has moved out of geography and into time. In the past, difference was a matter of where you were: a café in Lisbon was not a café in Leeds, and neither had changed much in thirty years, because neither needed to. Now the two look much like each other, but neither will look like this in five years. The current oat-milk-and-filament-bulb style replaced something, and will itself be replaced by something, more or less everywhere at the same time.

Walk down a high street in Manchester, Munich or Milan & the similarities are more striking than the differences. That is not only a point....

15/09/2026

Greggs Has Overtaken Costa

The UK coffee market is splitting in two. Greggs has just overtaken Costa as the country's largest coffee operator - on the back of a £2.40 latte - while premium names like Blank Street and WatchHouse keep raising money and growing revenue. Everyone in between (Starbucks, Costa, Caffè Nero) is losing money and share. We look at why: it's less a shift in taste than a shift in costs, as running a genuinely good cup gets cheaper just as running a cheap one gets harder.

Also, in this week’s issue, I look at the creeping use of "basis points" in foodservice reporting - a unit built for exact, contractual numbers like interest rates, now being applied to like-for-like sales and food cost percentages that were never precise enough to justify it. I make the case for why the industry should stick to plain percentages.

The UK coffee market is splitting in two. Greggs has just overtaken Costa as the country's largest coffee operator, thanks to a £2.40 latte.

11/09/2026

Welcome to the BSA - https://mailchi.mp/5affb132c1cb/welcome-to-the-bsa-trash
TRASH has joined the Beverage Standards Association, and we look forward to working with you in the future :-)

08/09/2026

The Bayeux Tapestry

This week's briefing starts somewhere unexpected: a scene stitched into the Bayeux Tapestry showing Bishop Odo blessing a meal before the Battle of Hastings.

It turns out the two cost lines the Normans faced in 1066 - food prep and serving - are still the backbone of our sector's economics today. What's changed is everything piled on top of them.

From there, we run the numbers on the Hormuz blockade and what happens if food prices settle 10%, 20% or 50% higher. The results are counterintuitive: eating out could become *better value* relative to eating in - but only because operators are quietly absorbing the difference out of their own margin. At the top end, that means giving up the entire profit on a £15 dish just to hold the price line.

This week's briefing starts somewhere unexpected: a scene stitched into the Bayeux Tapestry showing Bishop Odo blessing a meal before......

25/08/2026

The July/August'26 edition of Something's Brewing - https://mailchi.mp/24de6625338a/the-july-august26-edition-of-somethings-brewing_members_supporters-6430726.
There is an eclectic mix of articles to read in this edition

25/08/2026

Is Resilience a Cliché?

We say foodservice is resilient so often it's become a cliché. But Europe's drought has made me rethink what that word actually means.

The sector can substitute its way out of almost anything: swap a supplier, reweight a menu, adjust prices, de-skill a kitchen. That's resilience. But water can't be substituted. And the same fragmentation that makes the sector nimble also means there's no single voice, no single balance sheet, when it comes to adapting to drought.

In this issue, I look at why foodservice's usual playbook for resilience breaks down when the pressure is water rather than price, then turn to the new planning rules aimed at stopping pubs being converted into housing and ask whether the numbers actually support the crisis narrative around pub closures. I also dig into what the BBPA's closure data going back to 2005 tells us about whether policy can really change the underlying trajectory.

We say foodservice is resilient so often it's become a cliché. But Europe's drought has made me rethink what that word actually means.

20/08/2026

Something’s Brewing – July/August’26

 Something's Brewing - July/August 2026 Something's Brewing Articles & News If you have enjoyed this edition of Something's Brewing, contact our Editor, who always looks for articles and advertising for forthcoming magazine editions. You can contact Katie Mather, the Editor, at [email protected]. Our 2026 feature list is here. We offer competitive advertising rates for BSA members, Supporters, and non-members....

Something's Brewing for July/August is now available. 45 pages of news, articles, profit guidance, and lots more features & analysis