Brewhouse & Kitchen – the 22 site-strong brewpub group has reported a busy and hugely successful festive period. For the Christmas and New Year period, liquor and food sales for Brewhouse & Kitchen Ltd were up 7% Like For Like.

Pre-booked party covers were up by 14% LFL across the 22 Brewhouse & Kitchen sites. The company benefitted by offering a flexible buffet package alongside the traditional three courses. This helped broaden the appeal of the offer and gave party bookers an increased level of options across various menus and price points.  The team have also reported a significant rise in companies booking Christmas parties in January -aimed at those who work in retail, the emergency services and other sectors that we all rely on during the festive period.

The ‘experience-led gift’ market continues to grow, and B&K Gift Experiences aim to be the leader in this category.  Reinforcing the consumer shift towards ‘experience’ over ‘material’ gifting, the group achieved a significant 50% LFL increase in Gift card sales over the festive period.  Their unique “Brewery Experience Day”(£85pp), which offers guests the opportunity to become a brewer for a day, was the biggest selling gift.  Gift card sales will begin to be redeemed predominantly in Q1 of the following calendar year, which bolsters sales during what would traditionally be a slower trading period.  The company have also reported that sales of their overall experiences have grown 22% YOY in 2019.

Head of Marketing Matt Preisinger commented:

“At Brewhouse & Kitchen, we identified that many of our target customers are now focused on experience-based rather than physical gifts so we tailored our offering towards that. We developed new visuals for social media a suite of video work for digital advertising, tv screens in the brewpubs and a refreshed design on all promotional materials to help capture this market and these results demonstrate the success of this strategy and the hard work of the teams across the country. ”

CEO Kris Gumbrell also commented:

“We are very proud of our teams across the country who are continuing to work hard and deliver post-Christmas parties.  We look forward to welcoming many retail workers, emergency service teams and others who didn’t get an opportunity to celebrate Christmas during December. These are a robust set of results, the addition of more flexible Christmas party options and experience-led gifts have added another series of strings to the bow of our business. Now, we plan to build on this success by further developing the experience arm of our business over the next 12 months and beyond.”