Hospitality industry in the United Kingdom

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The hospitality industry in the United Kingdom is largely represented by the country's hotels, pubs, restaurants and leisure companies, and produces around 4% of UK GDP.

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There are over 207,000 eating venues in England, and around 25% of these are fast-food outlets.

According to the British Beer and Pub Association, around 8.5 billion pints of beer were sold, with 7.4 billion 175ml glasses of wine, and 1.2 billion pints of cider in the UK in 2018. Beer has 54 pence of duty per pint. There are around 2530 breweries in the UK.

In 2022 the hospitality industry was the 3rd biggest employer in the UK, accounting for 3.5m jobs through direct employment, and a further 3.0m indirectly. [1]

In 2022 the UK hospitality industry paid around £54bn in tax receipts. [1]

The 1908 seaside poster for Skegness in Lincolnshire Poster, GNR. 'Skegness is So Bracing' by John Hassall.jpg
The 1908 seaside poster for Skegness in Lincolnshire

The UK tourist industry is the 8th largest tourism destination in the world. VisitBritain is responsible for tourists to the UK. In 2022 there were around 31.2 overseas visitors to the UK. [2]

It is not one of the larger industries, by GDP, in the UK.

Closures

922 restaurants closed in 2019, and 1188 closed in 2018.

Training

The former Hotel and Catering Industry Training Board was formed 7 November 1966 [3] and became the Hospitality Training Foundation, which ultimately became People 1st on 19 May 2004; it is the industry's sector skills council. In 2002 around eighty National Training Organisations (NTOs) became around twenty SSCs. The Council for Hospitality Management Education conversely has an international outlook.

The National Skills Academy for Food & Drink (NSAFD) is at York. [4] The Institute of Hospitality was known as HCIMA - Hotel and Catering International Management Association, which became the IoH in April 2007. The Hotel and Catering Institute was founded in 1949; the professional body merged with the Institutional Management Association in 1971. Hotel, Restaurant & Catering (HRC) is a main national event.

Greene King and Mitchells & Butlers are two of the biggest apprenticeship providers in the UK, with around 1,500 each; only the armed forces, BT and HMRC have more numbers of apprenticeships.

Victor Ceserani MBE pioneered catering education in the UK, when he was head of catering at Ealing College, now part of University of West London; this had been Acton Hotel and Catering School until 1957 and trained many airline catering staff; he wrote The Theory of Catering and Practical Cookery, with Ronald Kinton and David Foskett (academic).

Colleges

Leicester College claim to be the East Midlands leading training school for catering and food manufacturing. [5] Kendal College also claims to train top chefs, and also Bournemouth and Poole College. The School of Culinary Arts and Hospitality of the Victoria Centre of Westminster Kingsway College is known for catering; it was the first culinary arts school in the UK in 1910. [6]

Universities

The University of Strathclyde had the Scottish Hotel School in the late 1960s. Strathclyde and the University of Surrey were the first two universities in UK to have hotel and catering management courses, both at the same time. The University of Surrey moved to its present site in 1968 and was the first in the UK to offer a course for hotel and catering: a BSc in hotel and catering management, with a 48-week professional year starting in the March of the second year; the course was led by Brian Archer from 1978. Another important place for catering was the Dorset Institute of Higher Education, since 1992 being known as Bournemouth University. [7]

Hotels

The Royal National Hotel in Bloomsbury is the fourth-largest hotel in Europe, and the largest hotel in the UK, with around 1,600 rooms; there are three other hotels in London with over 1,000 rooms, with another being the Park Plaza Westminster Bridge.

The 1,019-room Park Plaza Westminster Bridge hotel in April 2011; it is owned by PPHE Hotel Group, and next to the Thames in Lambeth Westminster Park Plaza Hotel, Westminster Bridge SE1 - geograph.org.uk - 2407011.jpg
The 1,019-room Park Plaza Westminster Bridge hotel in April 2011; it is owned by PPHE Hotel Group, and next to the Thames in Lambeth

The 39-storey Novotel London Canary Wharf (40 Marsh Wall) is the tallest purpose-built hotel in the UK, at 419 feet; it is the tallest Novotel hotel (owned by Accor); it opened in April 2017; it has beehives on the 39th floor, which produce fresh honey for guests; Novotel has thirty three hotels in the UK. The world's tallest hotel is the 356m Gevora Hotel, built in 2017.

The UK hotel industry is worth £16bn. Travelodge has 595 hotels with 11 in Ireland, with around 12,000 employees, and in 2022 it turned over around £910m. Premier Inn has about 850 hotels, with 83,500 rooms, and a revenue of £2.5bn.

The UK has around 25,000 bed and breakfast establishments.

Alcoholic refreshment

Female-friendly establishments

Amanda Willmott had founded two pubs in Birmingham - Carpe Diem and Quo Vadis; this design formed the template for her new design of female-friendly pubs for Bass Inns, known as All Bar One, in February 1994, which first opened in December 1994 in Sutton, London; she went on to form a similar chain Ha! Ha! Bar and Canteen, in 1998.

Eating out

Beefeater Steak Houses were one of the first chains of restaurants, first opening in July 1974 in Enfield, London; in 1974 its most popular meal was prawn cocktail, rump steak, followed by Black Forest gateau and two glasses of Liebfraumilch German wine; by 1995 it was Britain's largest restaurant chain, with 270 outlets, serving 15 million people per year. [8]

The former cafe at Hartside Pass at Leadgate, Cumbria claimed to be the highest cafe in England, at 575m.

Food safety

The 1990 Food Safety Act was the biggest change since 1938. It was introduced due to rising cases in listeria in cooked chilled chicken products. It replaced the Food Act 1984. Prisons, civil service buildings and military bases would now have their kitchens inspected by local environmental health officers, which had not regularly happened before. There had been recent salmonella outbreaks in NHS hospitals. All food outlets would now have to be registered with local authorities. Environmental health officers could instantly close down restaurants, without needing to obtain a court order. Restaurant owners could be fined £20,000 and jailed for six months by local magistrates. [9]

The Food Safety (General Food Hygiene) Regulations 1995 were introduced on 15 September 1995, which implemented the European Food Hygiene Directive 93/43/EEC.

The Food Information Regulations 2014 brought in the necessity for businesses to display the 14 allergens. This originated from the European FIC Regulation of December 2014, the Regulation (EU) No 1169/2011.

List of food poisoning cases

Companies

Stonegate Pub Company

The Stonegate Pub Company (based close to the M1 in Luton) is the largest pub group in the UK, after it bought Ei Group in March 2020 for £3 billion.

Whitbread

Before it sold Costa Coffee in January 2019, Whitbread, in Houghton Regis in Bedfordshire, was the UK's largest hotel and restaurant group, owning Premier Inn, Brewers Fayre and Beefeater.

Premier Inn

Premier Inn was developed and expanded in the 2000s largely during the leadership of Alan C. Parker, the chief executive of Whitbread.

Compass Group

Compass Group, in Chertsey in Surrey, is the largest contract foodservice company in the world. Sodexo UK employs around 43,000 people, and Compass Group UK has 45,000.

McDonald's

Since 1982 the McDonald's UK headquarters are north of East Finchley tube station, being officially opened by Mrs Thatcher on 6 May 1983, when she was the local MP, and she also opened the PS20m extension on 21 April 1989 McDonald's offices on East Finchley High Road - geograph.org.uk - 6968865.jpg
Since 1982 the McDonald's UK headquarters are north of East Finchley tube station, being officially opened by Mrs Thatcher on 6 May 1983, when she was the local MP, and she also opened the £20m extension on 21 April 1989

McDonald's arrived in the UK on Powis Street in Woolwich on 1 October 1974, the 3,000th restaurant in the company's history; in December 1971 a McDonald's had opened in Obergiesing in southern Germany. Fred L. Turner attended the opening. Seven other restaurants followed in London, from January 1975 with Golders Green, Baker Street and Finchley Road. [24] [25] A cheeseburger was 21p, and a Big Mac 45p; the Big Mac had been introduced in 1968. The restaurant was not, apparently, well-visited, so the company chose to heavily-advertise its products at less-discerning children.

In 1990 meat products were made in Milton Keynes, built in 1980, and Scunthorpe, built in 1989, with fruit pies made in the north of Huntingdon and doughnuts in Orton Southgate, owned by OSI Group, and salads made on the former RAF Methwold in south-west Norfolk (closed in 2006), and chicken products made by Avara Foods (run with Faccenda Foods) in Hereford. [26]

Burger King

Burger King arrived on 11 October 1977 on Coventry Street in London. [27] The second opened on 4 September 1979 on Victoria Street. The first Burger King outside of London opened in December 1980 at the Arndale Centre in Luton, now called Luton Point. [28] The third in the UK opened on 2 February 1981 on Queensway, London. The British restaurants were directly owned by Pillsbury. [29] By May 1983, it had nine British restaurants; McDonald's had 130, [30] and KFC had 350. [31]

KFC

The first KFC in the UK opened in Preston in August 1965. Another opened soon after at 78 County Road, in Walton, Liverpool. Many of these new outlets were largely franchises, which operated in ways of restrictive trade that could contravene the Restrictive Trade Practices Act 1956, and be investigated by the Office of Fair Trading. [32] David Acheson was head of KFC in the late 1970s. In 1971 KFC had been bought by Heublein, who owned Smirnoff vodka. By the end of 1972, there were 162 in the UK, with 90 in London. [33]

Pizza Hut

Pizza Hut came to the UK in Islington in 1973, being owned jointly by PepsiCo and Whitbread. By October 1983 it had 28 restaurants. [34]

Workforce

In 2015 the UK hospitality industry employed around 2.9m people – around 9% of the UK workforce. By employment, it is the UK's fourth-largest industry. The most jobs in the industry are found in London (around 500,000) and South East England (around 400,000); 18% of workers in the UK industry are in London. There are around 1.5m restaurant workers, and around 0.5m work in hotels.

The Food Safety Act 1990 introduced the training that staff have to follow.

Contingent of EU employees

Around 25% of the hospitality workforce comes from the EU, making up around 25% of chefs and around 75% of waiting staff. [35] [36]

In 2019, 1 in 50 applicants to Pret a Manger was British. [ citation needed ]

See also

References

  1. 1 2 "Economic Contribution of the UK Hospitality Industry - June 2023". UK Hospitality. Retrieved 4 January 2024.
  2. "ONS Travel Trends 2022". Office for National Statistics. Retrieved 4 January 2024.
  3. HCITB
  4. NSAFD
  5. Leicester College
  6. Westminster Kingsway College
  7. Times Thursday 25 April 1985, page 15
  8. Manchester Evening News Friday 28 July 1995, page 50
  9. Times Wednesday January 25 1989, page 1
  10. Times Tuesday February 11 1975, page 1
  11. Alaska in 1975
  12. Times Saturday March 24 1984, page 3
  13. Times Thursday April 26 1984, page 3
  14. Times Thursday August 22 1985, page 8
  15. West Lancashire Evening Gazette Friday 15 February 1991, page 6
  16. West Lancashire Evening Gazette Saturday 16 February 1991, page 1
  17. Times Friday February 15 1991, page 2
  18. Times Saturday February 16 1991, page 6
  19. Times Friday January 4 2013, page 15
  20. Times Saturday January 5 2013, page 15
  21. Times Saturday January 24 2015, page 32
  22. December 2012 Hornchurch
  23. McDonald's HQ
  24. Liverpool Daily Post Wednesday 16 October 1974, page 16
  25. Times Thursday June 19 2014, page 51
  26. Times Wednesday October 3 1990, page 20
  27. The Scotsman Wednesday 12 October 1977, page 3
  28. Biggleswade Chronicle Friday 19 December 1980, page 10
  29. Times Tuesday February 3 1981, page 15
  30. Times Friday May 13 1983, page 19
  31. Times Tuesday June 21 1983, page 10
  32. Times Wednesday November 29 1978, page 27
  33. Times Monday April 10 1972, page 14
  34. Times Monday October 17 1983, page 11
  35. "BHA report". Archived from the original on 2017-09-11. Retrieved 2017-06-13.
  36. "Employer Immigration Services | Employ Overseas Workers". www.wmimmigration.com. Retrieved 2022-01-19.