Hospitality recruitment firm, Limber, based in Bristol, says average shift hours posted by pubs and restaurants in 2025 were down 30 per cent in 2025 relative to 2022, highlighting the brutal conditions hospitality firms are dealing with.
Hospitality was one of the hardest hit sectors during the pandemic and has suffered agonisingly since, due to double-digit inflation, elevated wage costs, higher taxes and interest rates — and the ongoing cost of living crisis.
Chris Sanderson, CEO at Bristol-based Limber, said pubs and restaurants have been steadily cutting staff hours since the pandemic.
“The average shift hours posted on Limber have fallen from 112 per business per month in 2022 to 79 in 2025,” said Sanderson. “A combination of increased costs and falling consumer confidence mean that businesses are trying to do more with less and are quieter than they were before.
“Until the economy improves and people feel better off, this worrying trend will continue.”
Danny Matthews, owner of The Pennycress, a coffee shop in South Cerney, a few miles south of Cirencester, says his firm is being battered by high wage costs, business rates and a gruesome tax burden — and has had no choice but to raise certain prices.
He said: “The biggest killers right now are wages and rates. We’ve had to raise prices, though customers understood, and we’ve absorbed some costs to keep popular items friction-free such as alternative milk, which is sometimes double the cost of dairy milk.
“Hospitality is hard, but it’s almost impossible to do it ‘good’. I’d like to see more support for businesses like ours trying to do better for people and planet.”
Kate Underwood, Founder at Southampton-based Kate Underwood HR and Training, said hospitality firms, specifically pubs and restaurants, closing, is like a “town losing its living room”.
She continued: “Hospitality was always tough. Now it’s even tougher and includes bigger wage bills, higher employer’s National Insurance, higher energy costs and customers still expecting five-star service on a pocket money budget.
“Hospitality isn’t dying because owners can’t run a business. It’s being bled out by bills while everyone stands around asking why the lights are going out on the UK’s high streets.
“Two survival moves I keep seeing that work for pubs and restaurants: get ruthless on menu engineering by ditching the low margin heartbreakers and pushing the profit makers, and get forensic with rotas — employ staff to match real hourly trade and stop overtime creep becoming your silent leak.”
