Chicken shops have continued to drive growth in the fast food sector, but World Cup activity was not enough to reverse declining footfall for the pub sector, new data shows.
According to foodservice and hospitality data company Meaningful Vision, which tracks customer visits, pricing, promotions and store openings at 60,000 outlets, footfall performance in fast food chains was “highly polarised”.
Chicken shops continued to perform well with 10.5% growth between January and June. However, burger restaurants saw customer visits fall another 4%, adding to the 2.6% decline registered in the first three months of the year.
Footfall at pubs fell by 4.8% in June compared with the same time last year. While this was the smallest year-on-year decline of any month in 2026, Meaningful Vision found that pubs and restaurants remained “deeply in negative territory” for customer visits during the second quarter of the year, down by 7%.
“The start of the World Cup provided a sentiment boost and filled pubs for live screenings, but the uplift was not strong enough to reverse the broader downward trend for the sector,” said Meaningful Vision CEO Maria Vanifatova.
“More widely, the UK foodservice industry is still struggling, as consumers reduce how often they eat and drink out, while food and labour costs continue to rise, putting significant pressure on profits.”
Overall consumer traffic across the fast food, casual dining and pub sectors remained weak between April and June, declining by 2.1% year on year.
Across the first six months of the year, fast food traffic remained “lukewarm”, with a 0.9% decline in footfall compared with the same period in 2025.
However, June brought around a “relative improvement” across all sub-sectors, according to Vanifatova, “pushing fast food back into positive territory”.
“The hope will be that this can continue into the second half of the year, with price growth beginning to stabilise.”
There were also regional differences in consumer footfall growth, with only five of the UK’s 13 regions seeing a rise in the first half of 2026. These were concentrated in the south of England, the south east, south west, London, and Greater London.
Price inflation in restaurants remained higher than in retail at 6.8% year on year, though Meaningful Vision found that this began to slow from March.
Price growth also varied across different item categories during the second quarter, ranging from 2.2% for lunch deals and 3.1% for pizzas to between 8% and 11% for extras and dips, savoury bakery and hot drinks.
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