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Gail’s comes out on top of the inaugural Profit Growth Tracker: Gail’s, the bakery/cafe business which has grown to 175 sites, has come out on top of the inaugural Profit Growth Tracker, the new industry benchmarking initiative that measures profitability growth across the broad church of the UK’s hospitality sector. The new initiative from Propel Info, the leading provider of UK hospitality news, and leading sector advisory firm AlixPartners found that Gail’s has generated Ebitda Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) over three years of Companies House accounts of 105.3%. Gail’s took the top spot in the new listing from Big Mamma Group, the premium casual dining business backed by McWin, which currently operates circa 30 sites across Europe (Ebitda CAGR of 74.4%), and Gastronomy Restaurants, which operates more than 40 KFC franchises across Wales, Cheshire, Staffordshire, Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire (50.8%). Lola Cupcakes, Bettys & Taylors Group, Mitchells & Butlers, Fuller’s, Flat Iron, Wadworth and JD Wetherspoon made up the rest of the top ten. The Profit Growth Tracker is based on Ebitda growth across the last three sets of Companies House-filed annual accounts. It tracks eligible financial periods, starting post-July 2021, to ensure the effects of covid-19 restrictions do not impact the results. The final order of the top 25 was unveiled at the Propel Multi-Club summer conference and party on Thursday, 4 September at the Oxford Belfry, which was attended by around 500 of the sector’s leading operators and suppliers. Tom Molnar, founder of Gail’s, said: “We are proud to see Gail’s recognised as the leading hospitality business in Propel’s and AlixPartner’s inaugural Profit Growth Tracker. This achievement is testament to the hard work and creativity of our teams who thoughtfully source and bake with high quality ingredients that are grown with nature in mind. We continue to innovate our baking, creating and adapting recipes that respond to nature’s shortages and surpluses. We are grateful to our growing community of customers who appreciate our daily efforts to make food more enjoyable for the body and soul.” Propel managing director Paul Charity said: “This inaugural Profit Growth Tracker shows there are companies who are shrugging off all impediments to achieve strong growth. The current climate makes for a very challenging backdrop, which makes this growth all the more impressive.” Graeme Smith, managing director of AlixPartners, said: “The results of this profit tracker highlight that the leading businesses in the industry have been able to grow their profitability in the period since pandemic restrictions were removed. The industry has had to battle multiple pressures on key cost items and deal with customers facing reduced disposable income. The fact that growth has been achieved demonstrates the continued importance of eating and drinking out to the UK consumer and the efforts of operators to optimise their businesses and invest in growth.” The Profit Growth Tracker is based on a rigorous set of credentials. For companies to be eligible, they must be primarily food and beverage-focused or competitive socialising-focused businesses and not be a subsidiary of another operating business (the data will be picked up as part of the data for its group), show active filed audited accounts at Companies House within the required legal filing date, and must not have been involved in any formal restructuring process over the relevant period. Ebitda is determined as reported statutory Ebitda per Companies House filing, with directors’ emoluments added back to reflect differences in remuneration structures for privately-owned businesses. Qualifying companies must report Ebitda of at least £1m in the first accounting period and report positive Ebitda across all three sets of accounts (which will be pro-rated to 12 months in the event of short or long accounting periods). The full list for the Profit Growth Tracker 2025 is as follows: