April 2025 was the month the industry stopped debating cost increases in theory and started doing the maths on next week’s rota. Easter gave some operators a welcome spike in footfall, but the new tax year changes landed at exactly the moment everyone’s trying to staff longer days, later nights, and (in plenty of places) bigger terraces.

The interesting bit was not the grumbling, we all grumble. It was the speed at which operators moved from “we’ll absorb it” to “we’re changing the model”.

Late nights are back on the agenda, but someone has to fund the rota

The policy noise in April wasn’t background, it was operational. The Night Time Industries Association (NTIA) said 62% of night-time economy businesses expect to reduce staff and operating hours because of rising labour costs and the reduction in business rates relief. That is a brutal stat, because “reduce hours” is code for giving away high-margin trading time to your competitor who can still afford to keep the lights on.

JD Wetherspoon chairman Sir Tim Martin put a very specific number on it, saying costs are rising by £1.2m a week due to wage and national insurance changes, warning “not all in the sector will cope”. Young’s also went public with the scale, saying it faces an extra £11m in Budgetary costs and will mitigate through efficiency so it doesn’t push everything onto pricing.

Then you’ve got the regional frustration. The Scottish Hospitality Group criticised the Scottish Government for a non-domestic rates reform u-turn, arguing it leaves licensed hospitality at a disadvantage versus England. Meanwhile the Welsh Government partially softened its proposed visitor levy by exempting children and young people staying in hostels, campsites and outdoor centres, after concerns about affordability.

The operator takeaway is simple: costs are now dictating opening patterns. When the late shift costs more, every venue has to decide what its “profitable hour” is, and defend it with a better offer, not just hope.

Hotels are rebalancing, rooms matter more than branded F&B

April also showed how hard the hotel side is leaning into assets that drive repeatable revenue, which mostly means rooms. Whitbread sold 38 branded restaurants for £38m as part of a plan to exit 126 lower-returning branded restaurants and convert 112 into new hotel rooms, unlocking 3,500 rooms. That is not a commentary on whether food is “important”. It’s a statement about return on space.

Aethos acquiring Nobu Hotel London Shoreditch for its UK debut is the other end of the market, but it’s the same logic. Aethos is planning a reimagined reopening this summer with new culinary concepts and member spaces, in other words, a clearer “why here?” than a generic hotel bar that competes with 15 others within a ten-minute walk.

On the value end, Travelodge kept pushing London, opening its 85th hotel in the capital with a new premium look and restaurant concept, while also agreeing to acquire 11 hotels across the UK. And Z Hotels putting the freehold of its forthcoming Leicester Square hotel on the market for £42m, with a 35-year leaseback, tells you plenty about capital structures and where owners want flexibility.

For operators, the lesson is uncomfortable but useful. If the business model relies on F&B to subsidise underperforming rooms (or vice versa), the market is getting less forgiving. Space has to earn its keep, every daypart.

Food halls and competitive socialising are maturing, the deal flow proves it

A couple of April moves made the “experiential is the future” crowd sound less starry-eyed and more like serious operators.

Market Halls acquiring Shelter Hall from Sessions is a proper sign the food hall sector is growing up. We’re past the phase where every new hall is “ten street food traders and a neon sign”. The challenge now is repeat visits, not launch hype, and acquisition is one way to buy a proven location with established footfall.

Then there’s The Light acquiring boutique bowling operator All Star Lanes, with plans to re-energise and grow the business, and chief exec James Morris taking the top job across both. Pair that with The Light’s planned 70,000 sq ft Huddersfield venue in Kingsgate, featuring 15 leisure activities plus a six-screen cinema, and it’s clear we’re heading into the “multi-activity anchor tenant” era for regional schemes.

What this means for F&B

For anyone operating bars and restaurants inside these destinations, the bar is higher. Guests compare you to the unit next door, not the restaurant across town. When the whole building is selling “a night out”, your customer experience has to survive the rush, the pre-booked groups, and the messy handoffs between experiences. It’s less about perfect silver service, more about high-volume consistency and recovery when things slip.

Growth plans are everywhere, but the playbook is tighter than it looks

The most optimistic April stories were also the most revealing, because growth talk now comes with a format strategy attached.

JD Wetherspoon is openly seeking franchise partners to put pubs into hotels, aiming to grow beyond 1,000 sites by converting existing hotel spaces. That’s not traditional Wetherspoon expansion, it’s piggybacking on someone else’s square footage and footfall.

Wingstop reinvested about £56m into a new UK acquisition entity and set out an ambition to reach 200 sites in five years. That’s serious rollout pace, and it only works if site-level execution doesn’t drift. McDonald’s UK & Ireland appointed Mike Spencer as VP of Development, with plans for 40 openings this year, plus construction and acquisitions oversight, signalling that the pipeline is being treated like a production line.

At the same time, demand generation is getting more structured. Wagamama became the first restaurant to offer its loyalty scheme on Deliveroo, and PizzaExpress refreshed its loyalty programme, now with over three million members. Las Iguanas launched its first loyalty programme too. That’s the sector admitting something we’ve all lived through: if you don’t build a relationship, you’ll keep paying for your own customers through discounting, aggregators, or both.

The pattern is not “everyone’s expanding”. It’s that expansion is being engineered, via franchising, partnerships, and loyalty, because organic footfall is too expensive to rely on.

The common thread across April’s stories is that operators are choosing where to place their bets: pay for hours and fight for late-night trade, or reshape the offer so the same labour buys more revenue. Whether it’s hotels reallocating space, food halls consolidating, or big chains tightening their development playbooks, the industry is getting more deliberate about what each square foot is supposed to do.

Where measurement matters

When labour costs push venues to trim hours, automate touchpoints, or run leaner teams, guest feedback becomes the early warning system, not a vanity metric. Mystery visits are particularly useful when you’re changing service models, because they tell you whether “lean” has become “unavailable” at 7pm on a Saturday, not just whether the KPI dashboard looks tidy. That’s exactly where Mystery Customer Visits earn their keep.

And as more brands chase growth through franchising and partnerships, consistency becomes the real battleground, because online reviews punish variability fast. Pulling Google, TripAdvisor and Facebook into one place lets ops teams spot where customer satisfaction is wobbling by site or region, not three months later at a quarterly review, which is why Online Reviews Monitoring stays practical for multi-site operators.

May will bring the first proper read on whether those Easter crowds were a one-off or the start of a steadier summer run. If you’d like a sample report or a quick chat about what’s possible, get in touch.