YORK has been placed in a national top ten list of the UK's fastest growing cities in terms of licensed food and drink premises with a 4.4 per cent annual rise.
The city features in the latest Market Growth Monitor from CGA Peach and AlixPartners, with 11 new licensed food and drink businesses in the last 12 months putting York as the eighth fastest growing city in the sector.
The newly released figures, up to June 2015, show York has seen a 17.5 per cent rise in city centre licensed premises over the last five years.
Restaurant bars to have opened recently in York feature a mix of independent businesses and national brands, including Ambiente and Sutlers in Fossgate, and Turtle Bay which opened in part of the former Laura Ashley store in Little Stonegate.
Andrew Sharp, head of Business at Make It York, the company set up to market and promote the city, said: "York is establishing a reputation as a top gastro city, creating an attractive business opportunity for food and drink establishments.
"The number of new restaurants is testament to York’s vibrant city centre offering, and a reflection of the prospective returns investment in the city can bring.
"A strong dining out offer complements the city’s mix of quality independent and high street retail outlets, helping to grow the early evening offer and strengthening the contribution that the food and drink sector makes to the city’s economy."
Nationally the study found that, for the first time, the number of licensed restaurants has outstripped the number of drink-led community pubs, with the eating and drinking out market seeing a net 1,770 new restaurants open in the last 12 months.
Paul Hemming, managing director at AlixPartners, the global financial advisory firm, said: "In an active deal market with many groups looking to expand, this is an important and timely barometer.
"The figures from our first Market Growth Monitor illustrate that restaurant growth is genuinely a UK-wide story, with growth in many parts of the UK outstripping that of London.
"The reality of today’s eating-out market is that, beyond the M25, there are more expansion opportunities for the leading branded operators, as shown by the presence of cities such as Leicester, York and Sheffield in the top ten growth towns.
"The proliferation of branded eating-out concepts to relatively new destinations, and its obvious implications for the independent operator cohort, is a picture that chimes with what we hear in the marketplace anecdotally, through the businesses with which we work."
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