Lumina Intelligence's Q1 2026 read on the UK eating-out market puts average spend per visit at £18.35, a 5.5 per cent year-on-year increase. The lift is being driven almost entirely by menu price inflation and cost pass-through rather than premiumisation or larger basket sizes, but the headline number is significant for what it implies about operators' pricing power eighteen months after the worst of the input cost surge.
The 5.5 per cent menu price inflation sits clearly above the underlying food input picture. ONS data put CPI food and non-alcoholic beverages inflation at 3.6 per cent in the year to January 2026, with food inflation running at 3.5 per cent across Q1 and 3.7 per cent in the year to March. The spread between input and output inflation — roughly 180-200 basis points — is the largest the sector has recorded since before the pandemic and represents the first genuine signal of margin recovery rather than pure cost recovery at the better-run operators.
How operators got here
The story of menu pricing through 2023, 2024 and most of 2025 was one of operators running just behind their cost base. Input cost inflation in critical categories — oils, dairy, certain protein lines, energy contracts that re-rated off the 2022 peaks — outpaced the rate at which the average consumer-facing menu price could be lifted without triggering volume loss. Spend per visit grew through that period, but at rates that broadly matched or undershot input inflation, which meant gross profit percentage drifted in the wrong direction across most segments outside the very top of the market.
The 5.5 per cent figure in Q1 2026 represents the first clean quarter in which menu pricing has clearly outrun the input cost picture. Several factors are working in operators' favour at once: input inflation has moderated meaningfully from the 2023-24 highs, consumer willingness to absorb modest price increases on familiar items has held up better than many operators feared, and the structural shift toward set menus and meal deals — Lumina's panel data shows 43 per cent of restaurant diners ordering from a set menu in 2025 and 54 per cent of eat-in or takeaway customers using a meal deal — has given operators a price-controlled entry point that protects volume while permitting headline menu pricing to be lifted at the à la carte tier.
The FDF warning that could change everything
The optimism in the Q1 numbers comes with a significant caveat. The Food and Drink Federation's spring re-forecast has warned that food inflation could "treble" by the end of 2026 if regulatory cost layers feed through fully to wholesale and manufacturer pricing. The FDF's case rests on three specific concerns: the full rollout of Extended Producer Responsibility on packaging coming into effect through 2026, the carry-through of the National Insurance Contribution changes from the autumn 2025 Budget into manufacturers' fully loaded labour costs, and the second-order effects on wholesale pricing of the £500,000 rateable value threshold for the new lower hospitality multipliers, which leaves the back-of-supply-chain effectively unsupported.
Federation of Wholesale Distributors data shared with the trade press in April put 80 per cent of surveyed wholesalers as having sites above the £500,000 threshold, with most indicating they would pass through the resulting rates cost to caterer-customers. The arithmetic suggests an additional 3-5 per cent lift in delivered cost on top of any underlying commodity movement through the second half of the year — a number that would erode much of the margin recovery currently visible in the Lumina data.
What this means for operating decisions
The implication for operators planning their pricing strategy through the rest of 2026 is to assume that the favourable spread between menu pricing and input cost inflation is temporary rather than structural. The defensive levers — set menus, meal deals, modifier and upsell engineering, and the more aggressive use of EPoS analytics to identify and reprice low-margin items — should be sharpened during the period when the spread is in their favour, so that when the FDF's downside scenario starts to bite they have already optimised the parts of the menu they can control.
The premium end of the market continues to behave differently from the rest. The 5.5 per cent lift in spend per visit reflects a market in which the top of the menu is holding and being chosen — discounting across the whole card is, on this data, the wrong reflex. Operators with a credible premium offer who hold their headline pricing and let the value tier do the volume work look better placed than those who have tried to compete on price across the entire menu.