Small business advice platform Startups has reported that hospitality is the least optimistic UK sector regarding the next 12 months, with just 70 percent of pubs, bars and restaurants confident that 2025 will bring growth.

The figure is ten percent down on 2023, when Startup last ran its end-of-year survey of SMEs, and demonstrates the significant toll that tax rises and larger economic headwinds have taken on the industry.

“Firms have been dealing with a cocktail of challenges since Covid-19,” reported the journal. “Five years on from the pandemic, our research also finds that many have yet to fully recover financially.”

“The increasingly negative sentiments of hospitality business owners, as seen in our survey results, follows years of tough trading conditions for the industry that continued into 2024. On the world’s least-desirable menu for SMEs last year was a record-breaking rise in the UK minimum wage, despite firms struggling to raise pay.”

The report also cited the rise in employer NICs as making trade “even more difficult,” while new tipping laws mean “a fairer wage for workers, but have also decimated already razor-thin profit margins.”

“Lots of firms have been forced to increase their prices or add new charges to bills in response to the move, which has diminished consumer appetite for eating and dining out at a time when many are already limiting their spending.”