Big story of the week has to be Compass boss Mike Bailey finally falling on his sword. Even made the front page of the FT yesterday.
At the same time, as I guessed last Friday, his company changed its tune on its concessions business SSP and decided it was for sale after all.
Compass’s bugbear, school meals, was also hogging the headlines again as education secretary Ruth Kelly told the Labour Party conference she was going to make chips illegal.
Airline caterers are still finding it tough. Alpha Airports saw pre-tax profits drop by a third, while rival Gate Gourmet finally struck a deal to end the long-running dispute with its workers.
All the disruption has been good, though, for hotels at Heathrow, which had a bumper August, according to figures from Deloitte.
But in central London the picture was less rosy, with TRI figures showing a 9% drop in revpar in the wake of the July bombs.
Pubs were also suffering, with M&B reporting a slowdown in sales growth in central London since July.
Elsewhere in the pubs market, W&D said increases in the minimum wage and higher energy bills would cost it £7m this year.
Hotel group De Vere also pointed to rising energy costs as a cloud on the horizon, making it miss its financial targets.
More bad news for restaurateur Oliver Peyton, whose Atlantic Bar & Grill appears to have sunk without trace.
And London restaurants in general got a right slagging off from Time Out magazine over their supposedly “rip-off” wine mark-ups [302775].
There was more positive news from Hartford Group, who bought up the Henry J Beans chain for £5.8m.
Another, slightly larger, deal was Whitbread’s sale of its historic Brewery site in London’s Chiswell Street for £55m to the owners of Earl’s Court and Olympia exhibition centres. The site had belonged to Whitbread for 250 years.
And just up the road, Travelodge was unveiling plans for a 394-bedroom hotel on City Road, coincidentally also at a cost of £55m.
Quote of the Week:
"Costs don't have to affect a wine to the extent they do. All that bleating about London rent and rates is just a lot of nonsense." - Martin Lam, chef-proprietor, Ransome's Dock