Weather puts a dampener on sales at troubled Mitchells & Butlers

DRENCHING spring weather and rising food and utility bills dampened sales at Mitchells & Butlers, the pubs group riven by boardroom strife over the past two years.

M&B, which includes the 200-strong Harvester and All Bar One pub restaurant chains, revealed same-floorspace sales nearly dripped to a halt in the 11 weeks to 7 April, up just 0.2 per cent.

This compared with a rise of 4.4 per cent in the earlier 17 weeks to 21 January. It meant interim pre-tax profits at the group, which owns Glasgow’s Horseshoe Bar and the Sheep Heid Inn in Edinburgh, fell £1 million to £42m in the 28-week period.

Overall revenues rose over 6 per cent to £969m. Chairman Bob Ivell said: “We own a lot of places with big gardens. People forget that this time last year we were all sitting outside in beer gardens enjoying the sunshine. This year everybody’s been huddled indoors or going to the cinema.”

Ivell said profit margins at M&B were also squeezed with energy and utility bills rising “and food ingredients, particularly red meat, much higher. We are the biggest buyers of ribs of beef in the country through [our] Toby Carver chain”.

The chairman revealed M&B was down to a shortlist of “two very strong candidates” for the post of chief executive, which has lain vacant since March 2011 when Adam Fowle quit.

The company also lost chairman Simon Burke and another board member, ex-Scottish & Newcastle man Jeremy Blood, last year. Burke’s departure, which followed the abrupt exit of former chairman John Lovering early in 2011, reportedly happened after he fell out with billionaire activist investor Joe Lewis, who owns nearly a quarter of the shares in M&B. Lewis also owns Tottenham Hotspur FC.

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