With this winter set to be “crunch time” for pubs and restaurants, what is happening to the indies supplying them? As db recently highlighted, the first quarter of 2023 saw the highest rate of British restaurant closures in a decade, with more 569 businesses filing for insolvency in the first three months of this year, an average of five restaurants a day, while there was also a steep rise in the number of pubs closing in the first half of 2023 – 383, compared to 386 sites shut in the whole of 2022. With inflation still high and costs continuing to rise, there is no doubt that it will be tough winter and spring for hospitality. But this appears to be having a knock-on effect on the specialist off-trade, many of whom supply local on-trade businesses with wine. Iris Ellmann, managing director of independent retailer The WineBarn, which specialising in German wine, said that her company was continuing to face challenges despite having survived the Covid pandemic, striving to recoup diminished sales from other new markets. While she said it was understandable that following the pandemic restaurants had full cellars and needed to sell existing stock following the reopening of the on-trade, it is “still a struggle to regain restaurant and hospitality clients” that they had lost during this time. “When restaurants are offered a tasting, the most common response I get now (which accounts for 80%) is that ‘we are sorted for German wine’. This is because most of them are
This Article was originally published on The Drink Business - Wine
