Cafes and food delivery apps are our new rivals, Greene King CEO says

People swapping cask ales for cappuccinos or ordering a burger and a beer via Deliveroo rather than at their local are a new threat to pubs, according to the boss of Greene King.

Nick Mackenzie, who runs the brewer and pub chain with 2,700 sites across the UK, accepts there are other businesses fighting for consumers' money as a growing share of the population does not drink alcohol.

"They're taking away leisure time from the pub, yeah. You know, people are choosing to go into coffee shops," he says. "They are part of that competitor set, as are delivery [apps]."

There are now more than 14,000 cafes and coffee shops across the UK. Pubs still number more than 40,000 and the 57-year-old is adamant that the pub cannot be beaten as a place for bringing people together.

The industry's trend away from drinks-led "dingy pubs" toward food-led gastro pubs has been in effect for a while. ONS data suggests the share of pub company staff working in kitchen-focused roles surpassed those behind the bar in 2014 and has increased ever since.

More recently there has been an increase in the number of bars and pubs built around "competitive socialising", where dates or groups split time between the bar and games like crazy golf, shuffleboard or axe-throwing. That subset of hospitality has more than doubled from 280 bars and pubs pre-pandemic to around 600 now, according to data from estate agents Savills.

Some Greene King pubs are now expanding into this area too. If the company is to lean into amusements at more pubs, then Mackenzie's CV may be an asset.

Before Greene King he ran Merlin Entertainment, owner of Thorpe Park, Madame Tussauds and Legoland, which had a certain appeal to his two children.

"My kids benefited from that when they were younger — they had theme parks to go to. And when they hit 18, I got back into pubs, so they were quite happy about that too," he chuckles.