Possible impact of the upcoming smoking ban in England
Horizons have produced a preliminary report on the upcoming smoking ban. The conclusion is that in the UK as a whole, assuming that the smoking ban is introduced throughout the country in 2007, pub sector sales will fall by -3.2% between 2005 and 2007. However, sales of food, plus the drink that is consumed with it, will grow by 7.1% over the same two years.
JD Wetherspoon has been running experimental smoking bans in several of their pubs in England and have also monitored sales in their 39 pubs in Scotland. This has provided some insights into what might happen when the full smoking ban is introduced.
The company found that sales in their English pubs which had unilaterally implemented a smoking ban fell substantially. This can be put down to the fact that customers who wished to smoke changed their allegiance from a Wetherspoon non-smoking pub to a pub that permitted smoking.
However, in JD Wetherspoon pubs in Scotland in the first quarter after introduction of the ban found that drinks sales fell by 3.4%, sales from gaming machines were down 11.3% but food sales were up by 7.7%.
