Cafés and restaurants outperform rest of UK commercial property market

Cafés and restaurants have outperformed offices and retail spaces when comparing price growth within the UK’s commercial real estate market, new figures show.

Analysis by HARNESS Property Intelligence examined the change in prices per square foot across shop, office and café/restaurant classes between 2010 and 2017. The analysis was focused on key regional cities across the UK, including Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds, Bristol and Cardiff.

The data showed that the café and restaurant premises had experienced an average uplift of 8.5% over the seven-year period. Birmingham (15.8%) witnessed the fastest growth, with Cardiff in second at 10.8%.

Manchester and Liverpool saw rises of 9.9% and 9% respectively, while Bristol recorded a 6.2% rise. Leeds was the only city to post a fall (-0.52%).

Conversely, both office and retail space in those same cities declined across the board. The only exception was shops in Birmingham, where the average value increased by 11.2%.

“Analysing the changes in values of commercial property across categories and regions provides a useful bellwether for the health of different sectors,” said Ben Mein, CEO of HARNESS Property Intelligence.

“The eat out culture has long been a firm favourite amongst the British population and has remained resilient despite being threatened by the emergence of delivery service heavyweights and a generally unpredictable economic environment.”