Booker boosts sales by nearly 20% in its first quarter

Booker increased sales by 19.3% to £2.1 billion in the 13 weeks ended 28 May 2022.

On a one-year like-for-like basis the growth was 19.4%. Retail like-for-like sales grew by 2.3%, while catering like-for-like sales were up by 57.4%, with a net addition of  13,000 new catering customers.

“Booker performed so strongly during the quarter,” commented Ken Murphy, chief executive of Tesco.

“While this is partly due to the lockdown effect last year, there is also significant improvement in the underlying strength of the business. Booker has added over 13,000 net new catering customers in the first quarter, while continuing to provide exceptional levels of availability and service.

“Within the catering market, Booker has been a clear winner and that really is down to the customers it serves. And what we’ve seen there is that Booker is not only winning new customers, but its best customers are winning in the market overall. A lot of that is down to the fact that the Booker customers in catering are trying to manage their menus and they’re pricing more effectively than the rest of the market. So they’re quite competitively priced and Booker works very hard to help them manage their menus and their mix to keep that value proposition.

“That said, overall we see catering inflation running ahead of retail inflation. In terms of our first-quarter performance, it’s never one thing. Clearly our very strong value position is helping a lot. And I think it’s less about the fact that we’ve suddenly made a big play for value, it’s more the fact that we’ve been consistently good value for some time now. And so the customer has learned that it [sic] can rely on us. The other thing is that we have very consciously moved away from high-low stunt deals, multibuys, towards a everyday low pricing model, which means that customers can trust they’re going to get a good deal from us, no matter when they shop.”

A three-year like-for-like sales figure of 19.6% for Booker represents a comparison to pre-pandemic performance in the financial year of 2019/20.

Best Food Logistics was acquired by Booker in early March 2020 and is therefore included in like-for-like sales performance on a one-year basis but not on a three-year basis.

Meanwhile, although Tesco recorded a 2% rise in group retail sales on a like-for-like basis in the first quarter, sales in its core UK retail business declined by 1.5% in the period.