A wake-up call for anyone in foodservice

The conversations around the industry have started sounding like a stuck record. “Business is bad.” “Christmas won’t save us.” “Costs are out of control.” None of this is wrong — but none of it moves us forward either.

What does matter is what people are actually doing. Because despite the headwinds, this sector isn’t collapsing into defeatism. It’s doing the opposite.

Every operator, supplier, and leader I speak to is fighting on every front — cutting costs, reworking menus, renegotiating supply, protecting standards, holding teams together. They’re not coasting. They’re not waiting. They’re pushing, often with no certainty that the effort will pay off. And the remarkable thing? They keep showing up anyway.

This issue digs into the psychology behind that resilience and then hits the harder truth: the economics coming down the line aren’t going to get easier. Two FT stories tell a single, uncomfortable story. America’s beef market is breaking. UK prices are already climbing. Chicken is becoming the protein of strategic necessity, not preference. In the UK, Domino’s isn’t guessing, it’s pivoting before the crisis hits home.

If you want to understand what’s actually happening beneath the surface, what’s driving behaviour, where the pressure points are and what smart operators are already adjusting to - this is essential reading.

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