While “casual dining operators have been hit by several pressures all at the same time” Sarah Humphreys, lead partner for casual dining at Deloitte, added: “These would have been difficult to plan in any environment, but these pressures have all had a relatively short lead time, especially when you consider that a restaurant is locked into a lease that could last up to twenty years.”

However, improvements in consumers’s disposable income saw them spend marginally more on eating and drinking out in Q1 2018 compared to Q1 2017, but Deloitte said things are “still tough for consumers.”

The tracker also revealed that consumers are still concerned about their health and wellbeing, with Brits’s confidence in their level of general health coming in at -14% - a slight improvement on the last quarter (-15%) but down year-on-year (-13%).