Chain considers opening more outlets as consumers dine in at low-cost pubs amid cost of living crisis

JD Wetherspoon has revealed a near-eightfold uplift in pre-tax profits as price-conscious consumers flocked to drink and dine in at its network of low-cost pubs.

The chain reported on Friday that pre-tax profits in the six months to the end of January had risen to £36m from £4.6m a year earlier and said it expected a “reasonable outcome” for the current financial year.

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Shigeichi Negishi’s invention invites us to cast off humility and take a shot at singing stardom. His legacy will be credited – and blamed – for us living out our popstar fantasies

Received wisdom holds that haughty music critics, grinding our axes on fans’ beloved pop stars, are nothing more than failed musicians. This has always struck me as slander – not of critics, who certainly can be bitter and mean, but of supposedly failed musicians. How, after all, does one fail at music? To suggest success rides on certain technicalities, like talent or a career, gravely underestimates music’s draw, and nowhere is the lie more spectacularly exposed than in karaoke.

Here is an arena of musical greatness in which incompetence is the house style. Delusions of grandeur, haywire pitch, weird stage presence? Join the party. On that valorising little stage, “failed musician” becomes the most entertaining role in the business.

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Chain of private members’ clubs increases debt as it continues its international expansion

Soho House, the private members’ club popular with celebrities including Kate Moss, Kendall Jenner, Ellie Goulding and the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, has reported losses of $118m (£92.5m) for 2023.

The company, which has expanded from a single “house” in London’s Soho to 42 locations across the world, has lost money every year since it was founded in London by the restaurateur Nick Jones in 1995.

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From lunch in the mid-afternoon to restaurants open at 1am, our working hours and eating habits are sparking bitter political debate

Spain’s employment minister and deputy prime minister, Yolanda Díaz, described the late opening hours of restaurants and bars, earlier this month, as “madness”. “A country that has its restaurants open at one o’clock in the morning is not reasonable,” she said . Hospitality industry figures and conservative politicians responded with outrage. “The deputy prime minister thinks she lives in Sweden instead of Spain,” a furious restaurant owner in Barcelona told El País , pointing out the late sunset in her city. That day, 6 March, the sun set in Stockholm at 5.29pm, and in Barcelona at 6.48pm. In Stockholm, restaurants typically close at 11pm; in Barcelona, restaurants and bars are allowed to open until 2.30am on weekdays , and until 3am at weekends.

Spain is not Sweden in many ways. In 2022, in Sweden, the GDPvalue of a worker’s hour was $75, compared with $53 in Spain, which is below the European average. GDP per capita is almost double in Sweden . The standard working week in Sweden is one hour longer than in Spain . Overall life satisfaction is higher in Sweden.

María Ramírez is a journalist and deputy managing editor of elDiario.es, a news outlet in Spain

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Private members’ club choses unlikely location of Wakefield for inaugural branch outside capital

The Groucho Club, the private members’ club known for its hell-raising 39-year history in the heart of London’s Soho is expanding for the first time to an unlikely location: the heart of the West Yorkshire countryside.

The club’s first outpost will be located at Bretton Hall in Wakefield, the former arts education facility that sits within the grounds of the Yorkshire Sculpture Park , which will be converted into a club and hotel with about 60 rooms.

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Expensive ingredients on top of pay, rent, rates and energy bills force north London laksa bar and cafe to put up prices

“It has been one thing after another since Covid,” says Mandy Yin as she looks over the accounts for her small north London independent restaurant.

It’s just before lunchtime on a Friday and Sambal Shiok’s chef is busy chopping ingredients for chicken and prawn laksa, the signature dish at the eatery on Holloway Road, a busy thoroughfare not far from Arsenal’s Emirates stadium.

Fuluke Barca, the head chef at Sambal Shiok, prepares the kitchen and the ingredients for the day’s business; the prawns and chicken for the laksa; the rice noodles are cooked for the vegan laksa.

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Hospitality trade says chancellor failed to help save sector with VAT cut, while travel industry laments air duty rise

• Budget: key points at a glance

The chancellor has been accused of producing a “cut and paste” budget that fails to provide the tax changes needed to protect pubs and restaurants.

UK Hospitality, the trade body for the sector, said Jeremy Hunt’s budget had done little to “bridge the sector through a difficult period”, and failed to reduce the escalating costs businesses now face.

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After Covid and the cost of living crisis, bookings have still not fully rebounded for the critical festive period

It’s been four long years since Britain’s pubs and restaurants enjoyed anything approaching a normal Christmas.

In typical years, a month-long flurry of festive parties, family lunches and post-work debauches catapults the industry into profit, helping make up for leaner times. But last winter the energy crisis sent overheads soaring, in a sector where margins are already wafer-thin . And rampant inflation forced many would-be merrymakers to tighten their belts.

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Deal is thought to value the owner of the Balmoral and Brown’s hotels at about £1.2bn

Sir Rocco Forte has agreed to sell 49% of his family’s luxury hotel chain to Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund.

Rocco Forte Hotels, which owns 14 upmarket hotels including Brown’s in London and the Balmoral in Edinburgh, announced on Monday that it had agreed to sell almost half of the company to Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund in a deal that values the hotel group at about £1.2bn.

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