Following a trading update in October, these figures held little surprises and actually came in slightly ahead of expectations. Marston's operates an estate of almost 2,200 pubs across the UK and has achieved a reasonable performance, despite poor summer weather and increasingly discerning consumer spend.
Managed pub like-for-like sales slipped 0.6 per cent in the year, but the trend has started to improve, with growth of 2.7 per cent in the last nine weeks of the year. Marston's Inns is attracting customers thanks to low cost offers such as a £3.99 carvery and 2-for-1 offers. The trend of a maturing population visiting pubs has led to the launch of the 'F-Plan', an improved offer for food, families, females and 'forty/fifty somethings'. And a new £70 jackpot and the introduction of new machines has helped reverse the decline in gaming income, which has been in decline since the smoking ban was initiated in 2007.