Basket & Barometer June 2026

Welcome to Basket and Barometer. This is the June recording and we are talking about May. Hi Di, welcome back. Thank you, Simon.

Nice to be here. How are you? Good, good. We were just talking off air, remember in May, two bank holidays, glorious sunshine.

Yep. Um what's to go after? So hit us with the top line stats. I pray you have good news.

Finally, I have some good news. So just to as a precursor to that, just to say that the underlying dynamics of the economic position haven't really shifted. Consumer confidence remains in the doldrums. It has it's it's the same as last month, minus 23 on the index score for a GFK.

Unemployment's improved a little bit from 5% to 4.8%. So that's good news. But I think the best news is that retail sales went up last month annually from May 2025, based on both BRC numbers and ONS numbers.

So two methods of calculation can't be wrong. Of course they're different, of course they are, but they're both up, which is great. So BRC reported that retail sales went up 3.7% annually from May last year, following a 1% increase in May 2025, which is good news.

ONS, a slightly greater increase, and that went up in value terms by 6.8%. But that followed a very flat May in 2025 when retail sales increased their value by just 0.2%.

So some good news there. A lot of that uplift, I have to say, is an increase in online spending, probably driven by the heat. It's difficult to shop in person when it is just too hot. People sort of gravitate towards online, and the ONS reported an increase in online spending of 13.

5% in May from May 2025. But in May 2025, it actually dropped by 1.6%. So it has a low comparable, but the point is it's going up.

And is that kind of food-based? So we don't go out food shopping, or is it across the board? Is there anything that stands out in that? Predominantly it's it's going to be non-food.

Most of us do our food shopping in store. Only about 10% are online. So when we see this uplifted online spending, it tends to be non-food. And actually, overall, all of sort of if you look at the the OS sort of have a number of different categories, of course.

And one of their categories is textile clothing and footwear, which is a good barometer for fashion, really. And in May, values went up by 6.7%, but they've dropped in May 2025 by 4.8, so they actually were negative last year.

So and food went up by 4.1%. So, you know, there was a bigger uplift in fashion than there was in the food. But when when you start to look at the actual proportion of total spend take in food stores versus online, you know, it's just 10% of internet sales are food internet our food stores are internet sales.

And compared with 28% in fashion. So you see, you know, you don't see huge changes in food online. So if the if the trend is then it gets hot, we shop fire our laptops, keyboards, etc. That needs some longer term thinking, doesn't it?

Because we're being told, you know, year in, year out, it's the hottest year on record, it's hottest year on record, it's hottest year on record, is is the repetitive theme, and seemingly that's going to carry on within our lifetimes. So there probably needs to be a bit of longer-term thinking, maybe, around how you pull people away from that if it gets hotter, I guess. Certainly in I think we said times, didn't we, when we were talking before? Yes, absolutely.

I mean, way I mean, another indicator to look at how the the physical environment is is varying is to look at the footfall data by by type of destination. So Sensomatic look at footfall data across all retail stores, and then they break it down by high streets, retail parts, and shopping centres. And footfall was down last month, it was down by 2.6%, but you know, it's down continuously and has been down for as long, you know, for decades because of this draw of online, particularly when online spending increases, footfall will drop, but it's still a smaller drop than in April, so we we should be pleased with that.

But actually, the places that did better were retail parks. They footfall there dropped by just 0.5%. So clearly, people were gravitating towards those destinations where it's easy to get in and out, obviously.

And in May, with two bad holidays, they're going to be looking for garden products and barbecues and food as well, and all of those are available in retail parks. Whereas high streets saw a drop of 1.5% in footfall, and shopping centres, interestingly, 2.4% in footfall.

But we've got to remember that shop a lot of shopping centres are in town centres, and a lot of them are in our bigger town centres, and those are can be particularly uncomfortable to get to and navigate in the heat. So for years we looked at at Springboard, we looked at the differences in sizes of a centre and how that how performance varies. And we did see a marked pattern when it got very hot, people tended to gravitate away from those big cities towards more local towns. And so shopping centres, which tends to be in the bigger places, will suffer, of course, for that.

Which is which is interesting again, spending a lot of time in the the kind of states on and off through work. The states, the American model, clearly World Cup's and at the moment at the time of recording, it is that everything's out of town, massive big sprawling sites, air conditioned up to the hilt. Sometimes it's too cold to take you take your jumper. But that that's almost the reverse model that we've got, isn't it?

We we started with time centres and worked out. They started they started out and left that hole in the middle to a degree. Yeah, I mean obviously they originally started in town centres, but very early on they went out town. I mean, the 60s, you know, before we did, way before we did.

And they had that that's led to that donut effect in their city centres, which from a number of town centre conferences in the states that I've been to, they're trying to remedy, you know, because they clearly got a lot of beautiful city centres. We were talking before we went on air about Philadelphia. It's a fantastic city, but it has a real homeless and a real drug problem. And you see that in San Francisco and you see it in New York, because all the wealth has gone out of town.

And now they're looking at what they call the walkable city, which of course Europe and and the UK recognized very early on, and trying to bring that back into city centres. But of course, a lot of the affluent demographics live out of town and want to shop out of town, it's very easy. And of course, they have extreme they've had extremes of temperature for decades, you know, far longer than we've ever had. And I've been to Minneapolis, and you can't go in the streets in the winter because it's just so cold.

So, of course, it all it all moves towards having covered shopping environments where you could shop all year round in a in a climate-controlled environment. Here we've always had a much more temperate temperature, so we were able to have town centres that worked. But as you say, it is really interesting actually to think that this is going to become much more of the norm. I mean, I remember the last 10 set summers, we've had some extreme heat in every one of those.

May not be for the whole summer, but we've had at least you know one or two weeks where it's reached 35 or 40. And that is going to happen as we know more and more. And so then the question is how does high streets and therefore shopping centres within town centres you know deal with that and try and pull people back when the temperatures aren't this warm. I mean, I know I've changed my plans this week, and I'm not going out on Wednesday because it's gonna peak at 40 degrees or something, and I've just thought I'm not gonna put myself through it.

And a lot of people will be thinking the same. I have the joys of I love London, but I am in London this week on Wednesday, and I will be avoiding the tube at all costs and uh and walking or busting it, I think. Or well, actually say that I take I'll take the Elizabeth line because that's that's cool, that's air conditioned, that's good. Um but yeah, big big cities in that heat are tricky, aren't they?

Because the buildings just radiate the heat, and you've got all the traffic as well. So that's something to think about because again, we're gonna be a or we become in a country of more extreme heat, probably less cold but wetter November through maybe March. So that that whole thing's changing. I think the yeah, quick serve restaurants are kind of cottoned on the way you you know, you go any coffee shop, they've got all the ice drinks, all the summer specials, and they flip that in the winter.

So they've they've picked up on that seasonality quite early, even your KFCs of this world and your McDonald's, etc. done a great job. Maybe others uh uh have got some opportunity, let's call it. Yeah, I I I think so.

I mean, you know, i the hospitality industry has to respond very quickly to changes in weather. I mean, you know, we could we in this country we can go from this level of heat that we have at the time of we're recording this, which is all mid-30s, through to mid-20s or even early 20s in a matter of days. And, you know, it they they get peaks and troughs. I mean, I remember chatting to a chap who ran the food food MNS food stalls, and he said he's from his office window, when he looked out of the window at 12 o'clock midday, if it was raining, he knew he was going to lose £100,000 because people would not come out for a sandwich.

And so that responsiveness is absolutely critical. I mean, the fast food fashion stores had fast fashion stores have been very responsive for a number of years, haven't they, in terms of picking up on catwalk trends and also latterly, I think, weather trends. And but you know, even so, we've got these big shoulder seasons. And I remember talking to Gab actually, and they were saying, you know, they they man they manage the peak seasons really well, the summer and the winter, but the shoulder seasons were the ones they really struggled with, trying to navigate those and trying to make sure the ranges match the weather.

So we have a lot of variation, which makes it very tricky for certainly for fashion, but hospitality has become increasingly flexible, and so it should, really. Yeah, and also we will dive in for a nice bit of air conditioning when we get it. Yeah, too right. So, in terms of the outlook on the horizon, we've obviously got peak summer, so the kids will start to break up summer holidays, so people will be going away or staycations, whatever it looks like.

Unfortunately, they're kind of the war in the Middle East rumble rumbles on, it looks like it's stopped and then it doesn't. We've got, as we found out at the time of recording today, a new Prime Minister coming. We've still got all the stuff in the Ukraine. Obviously, you've got big sporting events, World Cup coming up, some big cricket games coming on, football season starts again, rugby, etc.

So any any views, any anything that's coming to light in terms of how you think we're gonna we're gonna see the let's call it the rest of the summer play out? Yeah, I mean I've done some work recently for Beauclair, who tracks sales in towns and cities, looking at the Q3 period, so the summer period and what that shape looks like across different types of locations. And what we identify quite clearly was the bigger cities, spending and sales will peak in July and drop away in August, and the summer period is June to August.

And so people will spend up into July and then they disappear off on holiday, so they tend that peak tends to fall away. Smaller towns and cities, that sort of sub-regional towns, so mid-sized towns, that peak tends to extend through to August. So people will continue to shop, you know, the the spending will continue to increase. Seaside towns, of course, what you would expect is sales peak in August, and actually, August is as valuable to those towns and therefore to the businesses within those towns as Christmases.

So if you're not prepared for August, you're gonna miss out and you're in those towns, you're gonna miss out on a massive revenue opportunity because seaside towns is just comparable in August to Christmas. You know, a lot of seaside towns don't have a massive Christmas offer. I mean, obviously they they have an offer, but it you know, people tend to gravitate towards bigger cities at Christmas to do their big Christmas shop. So August is absolutely key for Seaside Towns.

And whilst people sort of know it, it's important to see the numbers behind that, you know, and there's very little variation between August and December in terms of sales, just about 15% sound eight million. Excellent. Good. Well, we'll end there, slightly more positive one, a couple of maybe green shoots, maybe not.

We'll find out in the uh in the next couple of episodes. But but good, we've got some flussies in there in terms of the figures and uh and plenty to go at. So thanks again, Dyke. We will speak soon.

Thanks, Simon.