Restaurants, pubs and hotels still took the lion’s share of growth in January
The supposed retail bounce-back in January actually provided pretty slim pickings for the sector, with only grocery looking slightly more perky than recently. With domestic consumer spending growth of £1bn compared with January 2019, reaching £88bn, UK consumers were still pretty cautious and in fact total spend grew no faster than in December.
![](https://consumer-cast.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Screen-Shot-2020-02-24-at-15.05.11.png)
Restaurants, pubs and hotels on the other hand saw an acceleration in growth to 5.7%, taking £0.6bn of the increase in spending, leaving retail with just £0.2bn more than in January 2019. Any increase came from online sales, and with growth back down to just 3.7% after a Black Friday date-shift blip in December, even that star is fading.
![](https://consumer-cast.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Screen-Shot-2020-02-24-at-15.05.42.png)
On the whole, UK consumers in January looked decidedly “post-stuff” (in terms of cutting spending on non-food) but not post stuffing themselves – with food and drink – both at home and outside it.