More than 49,000 businesses claimed £849m through Eat Out to Help Out scheme

25 November 2020 by
More than 49,000 businesses claimed £849m through Eat Out to Help Out scheme

More than 49,000 businesses made a claim through the Eat Out to Help Out scheme, with £849m claimed and more than 160 million meals discounted during August.

The average discount per meal claimed for was £5.24 and the number of meals discounted and total value of claims increased each week throughout the month.

The discount was claimed by 55% of businesses operating as restaurants, with a further 28% claimed by pubs. Businesses with just one participating outlet took 93% of claims and 52% of the total discount.

Less than 1% of claims were from businesses with more than 25 outlets, but these businesses made up 34% of the meals claimed for and 27% of the total discount claimed.

The scheme enabled restaurants, cafés, pubs and other eligible establishments such as workplace and school canteens to offer a discount to customers dining in their outlet and obtain a reimbursement from HMRC.

The scheme offered a 50% discount off the purchase of food and non-alcoholic drinks bought to eat in, up to a maximum of £10 per person. The discount was available all day every Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday between 3-31 August.

The initiative was praised for producing bumper sales for the hospitality industry, with many operators continuing to self-fund extensions of the scheme after it ended in September, and pushing the UK's inflation rate to a five-year low in August.

The Caterer Breakfast Briefing Email

Start the working day with The Caterer’s free breakfast briefing email

Sign Up and manage your preferences below

Check mark icon
Thank you

You have successfully signed up for the Caterer Breakfast Briefing Email and will hear from us soon!

Jacobs Media Group is honoured to be the recipient of the 2020 Queen's Award for Enterprise.

The highest official awards for UK businesses since being established by royal warrant in 1965. Read more.

close

Ad Blocker detected

We have noticed you are using an adblocker and – although we support freedom of choice – we would like to ask you to enable ads on our site. They are an important revenue source which supports free access of our website's content, especially during the COVID-19 crisis.

trade tracker pixel tracking