Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. I'm sure by now you'll, you've already seen that we've had a very strong first half, with seven percent like-for-like sales growth, and core crucially, operating profit growth of 64%, demonstrating a very strong recovery after a difficult post-COVID few years. Our guest score is narrowly stronger, our core people metrics, and the macro cost headwinds continue to abate. So the lead indicators are good, and net debt has fallen to GBP one billion, which is 2.5 times EBITDA excluding leases.
So without further ado, I'll hand over to Tim to take you through the detail on the performance, and I'll then return to share our perspective on the market, notably on how it's evolving and what we're doing to maximize our success in that context, which will build on the momentum we already have. And with that, Tim, over to you .
Okay, thanks, Phil, and good morning, everyone. As Phil said, strong period of trading for the business after, let's face it, several very challenging years. Let me start with the income statement. Sales remained robust and strong throughout the first half, coming in at like-for-like growth of 7%. While that happened, we found cost inflation falling away quite markedly through the first half of this year, and I'll come and shine the lights on that in a bit core depth. But overall, they combined to give us a strong 64% increase in profits to GBP 164 million, at a margin nearly four percentage points stronger. Let me start with sales.
What I've set out here for you is the monthly like-for-like sales performance, both for this half, and I'll give you some context by going through and looking at last year as well. There is an inevitable degree of volatility between individual months, because we've got calendar changes such as Easter, particularly with the 53rd-week year last year. I wouldn't over-focus on one particular month, but I think the picture is still very clear that emerges from this, of a very resilient sales performance, not just over the festive period, which is very important to us, but also through into the quieter second quarter of this year. But remember, we sort of, we entered this year with like-for-likes running at 9%-10%.
And of course, that was largely a function of a very, very high cost environment at the time, so, so not a level that we thought we would be able to sustain indefinitely. But I think what you can see on this slide, if you've got the sales contrasted to the red CPI, which I put on the line, is that the CPI has fallen quite markedly. Sales have remained robust, so we exit with our sales growth fairly materially in excess of the rate of inflation, which is not a place that we have been for a number of years. Number of drivers behind the performance. Phil's gonna address some of the main operational initiatives that we've had. What you can see on this slide is the breadth of offering we have across the M&B stable, if you like.
Whether it's a food or drink occasion, premium or value, and whether it's located in urban, suburban or rural areas. We have a very, very broad spread and, you know, we believe that that affords us a resilience and a stability in uncertain times, which is very important. On a sort of dynamic basis, we're making progress with premiumizing the estate. That's, if you like, moving the center of gravity of that bubble chart up. And a couple of advances we've made on that in the last year, as you'll know, we completed the purchase of Ego Restaurants, which is there, last summer. And today, we are announcing the purchase of Pesto Restaurants, which we think those together will provide a number of conversion opportunities for us throughout our estate. And Phil will talk a little bit core about that when he comes on.
So the strong sales performance converted very well to strong profit growth. We've continued with our capital plan, and I've separated out the main drivers here. We're getting good returns on the investments we're making from last year's project. This year's projects are diluted initially, of course, because we have closure periods, but will add to our profit growth next year. We generated GBP 10 million of efficiencies, largely through our Ignite program. These are all set against an increase in costs, and GBP 48 million coming largely from labor, which is our biggest cost increase, but also food, drink, and other inputs. What I've put separately on this chart is our energy cost movements, because they came down very sharply in the first half of this year.
Now, to remind you, we buy forward our energy from about six months out, right, on a sort of staggered basis. So I think we've learned that that's a little bit shorter than most people in our sector, but it's, you know, a strategy, a policy that we're happy with. What it did mean was that as energy prices spiked, we felt the pain very early and very quickly. But of course, we've maintained an unchanged approach, so we see the benefit of that coming out as energy prices start to drop. And we had a GBP 30 million energy cost deflation in the first half, which of course is very helpful to help offset the rest of the cost inflation that we had.
Now, if I look at cost inflation, you know, for the whole of this year and maybe going forward to next year on this chart, the position of ease against what we were talking to you about in November, we announced prelims. We were talking then about a GBP 65 million cost headroom, I think that's probably about 55 now. Living Wage went up 10% at the start of our second half, and it's extended actually to cover over 21. So that's been our major cost increase this year. Food and drink inflation has moderated core than we thought it would, so that- that's been a bit, bit better. And then we've got the energy deflation that I talked about. GBP 30 million benefits in the first half. We expect the full half impact will be about GBP 45 million.
So, still deflating in the second half, but slightly less than we enjoyed in the first half. You know, so all that gives us, you know, as best as we can see, a cost headwind for this year of GBP 55 million, slightly better than what we thought when we went into the year. If I look forward to next year, and I always feel a bit brave putting this slide up and talking to it, but I can just say the best we see things as we stand here today. I think hopefully, food and drink should remain fairly benign. It's come down quite nicely this year. We don't see any immediate reason for that to change. I think the biggest increase in costs we're gonna have is labor. You know, we've had two years of just about a 10% increase in the statutory minimum.
I suspect it to be very close to that next year as well, maybe depending on politics and timing of election, what have you. I think the big difference for us, though, with a labor cost and others is when labor costs go up, whilst the increase in our cost base is immediate and it is definite, we have to remember that that money is going to our guests, right? So we would back ourselves to get a little bit of that back through our tools. So it's not perhaps the same as something like an energy cost increase that you don't really see on the outside for. And lastly, energy for next year, it'll be what it'll be. We, you know, we'll keep buying forward from six months.
As we stand here today, I wouldn't expect any core deflation, but what now we see it being a large increase that we're gonna have to face. So that's looking at costs going forward to next year as well. The result, good profit result, accompanied by very strong cash flow, all of it helped by, you know, a one-off item and some timing differences. Really pleasingly, we received a refund from our main pension plan, escrow account of GBP 35 million. So after a number of years of contributing to that plan, we're now starting to get to get some funds back. I'll talk a little bit core about that before I finish. We had an inflow from working capital, GBP 27 million. I think if you're modeling, you should expect most of that to reverse in the second half.
I think the full year picture will be maybe mildly positive or flat. We had slightly lower CapEx in the first half. Again, that's timing. We still expect our full year CapEx to come in around about 180, which is what we guided you to at the beginning of the year. So we see a slightly heavier cash outflow on CapEx in the second half. But overall, really strong cash performance, generating GBP 137 million and GBP 67 million after bond amortization. And that strong cash flow, of course, continues the path that we've been on for a number of years of strengthening our balance sheets. We have an asset base of just under GBP five billion.
We now have our net debt down to GBP 1 billion, and that represents 2.5 times, you know, the last year's EBITDA, or 3.6, if you include leases. Looking forward, you'll see the securitization continuing to de-gear, as we have on this chart here, and we actually set to service GBP 200 million per year. We're well, well into the life of a structure that started in 2003, and the end is much closer than it has seemed for a long time. And that's our view of the structure's changed, that, you know, initially seemed perhaps a fairly expensive legacy financing arrangement, and now seems to us that it's a financing asset, and certainly cheaper than we can get out and replace that debt within the market.
So we'll keep de-gearing, we'll keep on that curve, and we're getting closer to 2030, where a whole raft of bonds fall off, and our debt service falls quite markedly from GBP 200 million to GBP 70 million. I'll just say a few words on pensions before I move on. An area that for many, many years, we've been putting GBP 50 million of cash into some plans where the, which has seemed like a bottomless pit, to be quite frank, it never seems to get any better. We're now in a completely different position in terms of that. We've essentially de-risked them both to buy-ins on terms better than those that we were funding. And it's really encouraging now to therefore see that GBP 35 million come back from the escrow main plan. There's still another GBP 12 million out on the executive plan.
You know, I'd hope we get the majority, if not all of that, back in the next year or so. Plus, we have a surplus in the main plan, and if that persists, then, you know, we'll start looking at ways that we might be able to get some value from that going forward as well. So before I hand over to Phil, a very strong financial performance across sales, across profits, across cash, and across our margin accretion. We've made success, progress on a broad front across our strategic objectives, and Phil's gonna take you through a lot of those. And as I stand here today, of course, there's uncertainty, but the future looks very encouraging for us, both in terms of strong performance for this year, and carrying through momentum into next year as well.
With that, I'll hand you back to Phil.
Thanks, Tim. I'm sure I do the slides this time, right. You can see that we've had a very strong first half. Sales remained comfortably ahead of the market, as have been for several years now, as measured by the Peach Tracker. All brands have performed relatively, relatively well and all in like-for-like sales growth, with Nicholson's and Toby Carvery leading the way. Perhaps that's no surprise. Nicholson's reflects the benefits from the return to office working and the return of tourists to city centers. Toby Carvery is in a sweet spot for cost of living crisis by offering a very healthy and fresh product at fantastic value, while allowing guests to serve themselves and eat as much as they like, which they certainly do.
The premium food offers of Miller & Carter and Premium Country Pubs have seen the slowest growth year to date, but while still widely used for special occasions, the cost of living squeeze has dampened frequencies. Now, we don't think this will be a permanent feature as these impacts tend to be cyclical, and given the very strong guest sentiment scores for these brands, we know they remain very much on their repertoires. In any case, both brands still had like-for-like sales growth over 4%. I believe that this outperformance should continue, as our lead indicators are very strong. We use a balanced scorecard to ensure the quality of our profits is as good as the quantum.
We measure retail team engagement, guest health, which is a combination of guest review score and complaints per thousand meals served, and our safety record. Our guest review scores and complaint ratio have never been better, and guest sentiment, which is another measure that we look at, has never been stronger either, and shows a continued outperformance to the market. Similarly, our people metrics have never been better either, with the highest engagement score we've ever had at 83.1%, and we also have the lowest turnover for retail team that we've ever seen, standing at 72%, which means we're building up the experience again in our team, something that we'd lost through COVID lockdown.
As for our safety record, we measure our safety visits that score four or five out of five, and I'm pleased to say that here, too, we're at record highs. If we add the fact that our return from investment for our remodel program is sitting at over 30%, then we feel we're well positioned for the future. As macro cost headwinds start to subside, and in recognition of lower general inflation, so less price is being taken across the menu, across the market. And indeed, we only put through circa 1.8% in our recent like-for-like menus. We would also expect the pricing now to sort of return to annual 2.5%-5%, per annum across the market, a core normal level of pricing than we received, than we received pre-COVID.
As for volume, they had been tracking slightly ahead of last year, but the tail end of part one, they dipped below, a reflection that we believe of the adverse weather conditions and temperatures that we've seen. It's certainly difficult to think of any year when we've not enjoyed at least one run of warm, sunny days by the end of part one. And as soon as the sun did shine a couple of weeks ago, so sales jumped immediately. So being summer-ready is the order of the day. I would, however, add that as we continue to premiumize our offers and convert sites, we would expect to sacrifice some volume for higher spend per head. We're therefore performing very strongly on both financial and non-financial metrics across the board, and we feel the business has real momentum.
However, while we feel very positive about what we're doing, we're also very, acutely conscious that the perception of the sector has not fully recovered post-COVID in the eyes of the outside world. Therefore, as a departure for what we normally do for these presentations, we thought we'd step back and share our read of the market that we trade in, including the themes and trends that are evolving within it, as this will explain why we're doing the things that we do, and hopefully demonstrate that there's a lot to feel confident about. Lumina Intelligence forecasts that the U.K. eating out market will grow at circa 2.4% per annum over the next three years.
While they use a broad market definition, with coffee shops and fast food predicted to be the leaders, Lumina also acknowledged that branded restaurants will continue to be winners at the expense of independents in particular. Indeed, market supply, which has seen a drop of 18,000 licensed properties over the last five years, is still expected to see some fallout of independent operators. Although closures are slowing, this is clearly still an advantage to those that remain. It's also worth noting that we now have an eight-year-old track record of comfortably exceeding the market average, which we don't expect to change. So we view the Lumina guidance as a positive indicator for us for the next three years.
Our scale, the investments we have seen and we continue to make, our unmatched stable of well-known brands, and Ignite, our transformation program, that is full of sales and profit-enhancing initiatives, means that we would expect to stay ahead of the majority of our peers. Lumina also talked heavily about falling inflation, which will take pressure off operational costs, and how a growth in real consumer income will boost spending power. These are trends that we recognize, and having navigated the last three years successfully, we believe it represents a very favorable backdrop for the whole sector and for our business. This has also been reflected in other indices that we follow, which demonstrate growing consumer confidence and bodes well for the hospitality industry.
Against that backdrop, which obviously is an improving backdrop, we've identified five key consumer trends evolving in the post-COVID world, which we believe all operators will need to understand and embrace. We will continue to use a combination of our brand work, our capital investment program, and Ignite, our transformation program, to ensure that we have sufficient activity to meet each one of these consumer needs, and hence ensure that we continue to be successful. The first trend is something that we call value scrutiny, which is about the here and now. As a result of the cost of living squeeze, the consumer is ever core precious about their leisure time and their leisure pounds. Frequency of visitation is down, but when they are out, they still opt for a premium experience, and are less forgiving when the operator gets things wrong.
To some extent, it was ever thus, but the cost of living squeeze understandably amplifies that impact, and so it's beholden on all operators to focus on superior guest care. Now, we've already delivered a vast array of Ignite initiatives designed to improve service and to enhance guest experience. Our Auto- Order project, which automatically populates each site's food and drink orders, has helped to reduce product outages, which we know is a major dissatisfier to guests. Order and Pay at Table alleviates another point in the guest journey that can frustrate by putting guests in control of ordering and payment, if they choose to do so.
We're also currently in the middle of guest training workshops for all of our general managers and key team, and we've embedded what we call the Pride in the Basics app in the business, which digitally records daily standard checks, enabling us to better understand the key themes that are emerging.... Our guests are genuinely at the heart of all that we do, and we use the myriad of feedback that we get from complaints, compliments, and brand interactions to drive our brand agendas. The other component of value is, of course, price, and by remaining structured and systematic in the way we take price, by product and by business, with decisions based on regular peer group price surveys, means that we are, we remain acutely aware of market and product relativities and price elasticity.
The second key trend we identify is around premiumization and experience, which recognizes the growing importance of quality in all that we do and in the need to provide a greater overall experience, not just stopping at good food and beverage. Now, we've always believed that having a great environment and great standards is just an entry ticket to doing business, but it has never been core so, that it's critical to how the guests feel while they're with you. Now, there are countless examples across the sector of established pub, bar, and restaurant operators being brave enough to invest big money to transform the image of their businesses, and premiumizing as they do so, and driving a higher spend, as a consequence.
And of course, there are also plenty of examples of competitors in competitive socializing emerging in the market too, providing a different reason to visit, with food and beverage being a secondary income stream for them. Now, we have been on that journey for a long time, and we would argue that we aim to operate at the premium end of every single market sector that we operate in, and that we'll continue to pivot towards the higher spend brands, where a site's demographic warrants a conversion. And that means we can create impactful environments that attract visitation and which are stand out in the market in which each business operates. With the wide unmatched stable of brands that we own and the diverse locations that we operate in, we can optimize our brand lineup in each locality.
So let me give you a few examples. As you know, we acquired Ego Restaurants, adding it to our stable of brands last year, with its Mediterranean menu being a good addition to the range of food types we currently have, and a good investment for the future, particularly as core health-conscious trends persist, as we expect them to. That is one of the main reasons for recently acquiring Pesto Restaurants, as its Italian tapas menu brings something unique to what we do, and we believe it will happily trade alongside the Ego brand. We have completed five Ego conversions, taking the brand up to 31 sites, and we've typically seen post-conversion sales grow by over 100%. Pesto runs in a very similar way to Ego and produces most of its menu from scratch in a central kitchen, supplying its 10 sites.
Over the next five years, we can envision a sizable mass market, but premium Mediterranean-themed stream of Ego and Pesto restaurants, adding a different string to our bow in terms of the segments in which we operate and premiumizing the space as we do so. Quality branded and themed offers will continue to do well if executed correctly, and we believe we have a track record of doing just that, and a range of proven brands that nobody else in the market comes near to. At the same time as acquiring Ego and Pesto, you will have read that we recently opened our first Orleans Smokehouse business in Solihull, based on Old Orleans, a brand that I and many of the M&B team know well from the nineties and early 2000s.
It's opened up very well, averaging over GBP 70,000 per week, and we're in the process of briefing the second and third sites. We've also tapped into the competitive socializing trend successfully by successfully opening our fifth Arrowsmiths implant, adding an additional reason to visit for those sites. Broadening our portfolio in this way, through a combination of acquiring established small brands, piloting new concepts aimed at premiumization, and enhancing guest experience, starts to give us core optionality for site conversion and should enable us to capitalize on whichever part of the market flourishes in the future.
However, premiumization and experience is not all about capital, and that is why we've developed a series of successful experience-led events across our businesses, such as Breakfast with Santa across our restaurants division, saxophone brunches in All Bar One, and third-party brand associations around beauty products in Premium Country Pubs. However, for each of our brand propositions, we will endeavor to stretch our product offering, recognizing the consumer demands for premium experience, and that's probably one of the reasons why cocktails have done so well across the whole portfolio. The third key trend is what we call technology and data. It's certainly fair to say that we have never had as much access to data than we do today, nor that our guests have ever been core comfortable engaging with technology than they are today.
Now, we have invested a lot of time and capital over the last nine years into this space, and that is one of the reasons why we are ahead of the market. We now have far greater ability to personalize communication with our guests and to improve their interactions with our tech platforms. For example, this Christmas, we were able to facilitate a pre-order digital option, enabling guests to take time to improve our menus and, of course, removing a lot of administration time for our teams. On order at table, we now have an upsell capability that can guide guests through our menus and encourage spend tailored to that guest.
We've launched My Account, allowing our guests to sign up and enjoy far core personalized interactive relationships with our brands, and enabling them to see their rewards and offers across all digital channels, and also to help them through their booking journeys. Next up will be a replacement to our current CRM system, which continues to be the engine room for all our digital marketing. Upgrading the system after eight successful years will take this part of our business even further forward and future-proof our expansion in this space. The fourth key trend is around health and wellbeing, which has been a theme for several years, but which we believe will continue to strengthen. Consumers are increasingly interested in and knowledgeable about nutrition and in managing their weekly approach to diet.
Now, we don't believe that this means people will reject alcohol or red meat or desserts, but they do want to know what they're consuming and want to have a choice throughout the week... To support this view, there is no evidence yet to suggest that now calories are printed on menus, that there has been any radical change in behavior. What it does mean is that people will want to enjoy a special occasion, guilt-free, if you like, and will compensate for the big night out during the rest of the week. So choice is key, and we put a lot of thought and effort into making nutritional and allergen information available to our guests, and into enhancing the low and no alcohol ranges that we offer, and into ensuring we have some low-calorie options for some of the treat categories on our menus.
So, for example, the mini dessert and coffee option in Miller & Carter. The final trend that I want to mention is around sustainability and conscientious consumption. Now, there's no doubt that sustainability has risen sharply in terms of awareness across the U.K., but currently there's less evidence, yet anyway, of a change in the behavior, I guess, in terms of how they shop, and certainly less evidence to suggest, to, to suggest any willingness to pay for core sustainable choices. However, this trend is growing, and we feel that we need to keep progressing, as the consumer will, at some time in the future, start to favor those businesses that are greener across the spectrum, and working for a greener company will become increasingly core important for team members.
To remind you, we have committed to having net zero emissions by 2040, including Scope 1, 2, and 3 emissions, zero operational waste to landfill by 2030, and 50% reduction in food waste by 2030 also. We remain focused on working towards our sustainability goals with numerous initiatives underway to support those ambitions. We've conducted further trials to better understand available strategies to remove gas from operations, including at least a trial of electric all-electric kitchen in nearly every one of our brands, and two all-electric sites testing alternatives for heating and water, too.
We've also installed solar panels to 86 sites with a plan to roll out to about 40% of our estate over the next few years, and although payback is volatile because it depends on the utility price, it currently sits at around six years. We were delighted to receive Science Based Targets initiative validation for our net zero plans in January of this year, and we'll begin to work to align with the Forestry, Land and Agriculture guidance by the end of this calendar year. We also continue to work closely with our suppliers on Scope three reduction plans, as well as collaborating with industry forums such as the Zero Carbon Forum.
Our sustainability strategy has a strong focus on the positive impact we have on the communities we serve, and so we're proud to partner with a charity called Social Bite, who are a homelessness charity. We're particularly proud of the Jobs First program, helping people back to independence through offering long-term employment opportunities, which to date has employed 18 people from their academy. Now, we see considerable scope to grow this over the coming months, and enhancing the positive impact we have in the communities we serve. So in summary, the business is in good shape. We have good like-for-like sales momentum across all brands. We remain ahead of the market. We have strong profit growth, and we are exceeding our lead metrics on our balanced scorecard. Our remodel program is returning well and keeps our brand fresh and relevant.
Ignite, our transformation program, gives us a roadmap for initiatives that will continue to drive improvement across every aspect of the business, meeting those consumer trends that we've identified. Consumer confidence predictions are positive, too, for the sector and therefore for us. The business continues to be geared, our profits are climbing back towards pre-COVID levels, and we would argue that now is the time for the outside world to start recognizing the future is bright. Thank you. We will now be happy to take your questions.
... Okay, hand up with the mic coming around.
Thanks. Good morning, Jamie Wallace from Morgan Stanley. Three questions, please. First, obviously, a very good set of results. You're back above 2019 EBIT, but you're not back in terms of margin broadly, or certainly won't be for the year. How should we think about the sort of cash profit versus margin going forward, and particularly what bigger comp tailwind next year than this year, then so thinking about 2025? Secondly, I see your—you've met your restricted payment condition, so what sort of dividend upstream should we be expecting now from the debt structures? And then finally, just linked to that, I guess, very strong balance sheet. Are you erring core towards M&A, it looks like, than cash returns?
How should we think about options for cash returns? Thank you.
Versus 2019, yeah, and this, this half is actually ahead of 2019. Whether we are at the full year or not, we'll, we'll wait and see. As you say, there, there are a number of things that, that helped us in the first half, like, disproportionate amount of energy deflation, rates as well, were lower in the first half than the rates we've seen second half. But in terms of margin, you know, I think we're some way off FY 2019's margin, but off the top of my head, I think that was 14.5%, something very close to that.
I don't see us getting to that in the foreseeable future, so certainly if you're putting together numbers for the next two or three years, I don't think you should have us achieving that kind of percentage margin. And do remember that, you know, before COVID, the margin was coming down a little bit anyway, right? We were having to run faster on the sales line than we could get profit growth. So it's not out of kilter with the trend that we had there. In terms of the restricted payment test, I can go through this with you, James, but we're not yet meeting our restricted payment tests.
We're well clear of our covenants, but I suspect it'll be next year, maybe second half of next year, before we start getting ahead of the restricted payment tests and the securitization.
... Strong balance sheet. I mean, you mentioned M&A. We've certainly put ourselves in a position where I, I think, you know, we can, we can contemplate M&A. I mean, for us, it's, you know, other than small acquisitions like Ego and Pesto that Phil talked about, anything major is almost certainly gonna be a freehold estate. They don't come to market very often. It's quite illiquid when they come. So it's a difficult thing to plan, and we're certainly not getting out less when you've got time scouring. But if anything comes to market that is a freehold estate, we will look at it.
Tends to be quite competitive, so it may be that we feel that they're going for a price that we can't justify in terms of value creation, but we certainly would be interested in any M&A in that respect, but it'll be opportunistic rather than priority. Oh, you mentioned dividends as well, yeah. We've, you know, we've been really clear on dividends for eight, nine years and what our criteria is to resume the dividends. And that is that we will be generating sufficient cash flow after bond amortization on sustainable basis to fund our dividends. What we don't want to do is put ourselves in a position where we're effectively borrowing to pay a dividend, and we are not there yet.
I know we are in this half, but that's only because we've got a one-off receipt and there's some tiny advantages. In full year, we will not be in that position. So we haven't yet made that criteria. One of the challenges is that we have GBP 200 million of debt service obligation until 2030, and that's a big cash outgo that we have to prioritize. So, we're not, we're not signaling, absolutely not signaling any, any return to dividends at the moment.
On your question around percentage margin, I should stress, we, we don't really think about percentage margin, and each time we convert to a core premium offer, we are sacrificing some percentage margin but for actually, so we think about it, to, to think about it in terms of cash. So I, I urge you to bear that in mind.
Yes, thank you.
Doug Jack. On the like-for-likes in the period just finished, could you sort of split that out between the like-for-like volume and the like-for-like price and mix, if that's okay? And this is an extension of the questions that's been asked, but would you look to do much core in terms of individual site acquisitions within the estate? Not necessarily looking for big deals, but just growing the estate again because it's been very static for a while, and I don't think you sold any properties in the first half, but I'm guessing you're comfortable with the NAV, where it is at 937.1p.
So I'll do it.
Okay.
I'm just on in terms of acquisition, I think we—I don't think we've changed our position. We will always buy a handful of sites, probably in a year, and we will make a handful of disposal at the same time and continue on that sort of track. I suppose what Pesto is an example of, if we spot something we think is good and it's gone through all those, you know, you know well Doug, that the hardest thing for any brand is those two or three years, that's when you can either be successful or fail. So if you find something small that's gone through all those growth pains and it works, and we think we can scale it and bring something different to us, then we'd look at those.
And in terms of anything bigger, it'll be opportunistic as we like to say, we'll look at anything that comes to market. But as Tim said, anything that's freehold and quality, everybody's looking at those, so we might overpay, but so we don't have to, but we will certainly look.
In terms of like-for-like, Doug, 7% like-for-likes, volumes for the first half were very marginally negative, right, so under a percent, so sort of flat-ish. So the growth came from spend per head. The majority of it was price. We're taking less price now, but, you know, we're still annualizing on when we took core price, and a little bit is spend per head, so that's a mix, and that's getting people to trade up within menus rather than actually raising prices. So the majority of that would be price. Morning, Jeremy from HSBC. Just following on from that question, a little bit, you've been pushing at that spend per head, that next thing for a while.
Is it—do you feel that's now exhausted and, and that it requires some, some rearrangement of the estate for these core premium segments you're talking about to, to keep delivering on that? This is the first question. The second one was, I think, Tim, you said you were expecting only 10% on labor next year. I'd just be interested in knowing why you think it's going to be that high, given that minimum wage should start to decline. And then, just related to that, any thoughts on, on, on things like zero hours contracts, workers' rights, et cetera, and, and any flexibility that could creep into the, into the system, how you planning for it?
Okay. Yeah, I'll take the first and third, so do I think we're sort of running out of road on premiumization? No, no, I don't, actually. I think what you see within all the formats we've got, premiumization goes on each way. So if you're talking about Sizzling Pubs, we're stretching menus there. With Vintage Inns, we're stretching menus there, as we are at top end. So there's site conversions, but I think the guest is sort of demanding core interesting products in each of the formats we operate in. So we'll often find that a dish that perhaps seemed like cutting edge in Premium Country Pubs five years ago, might now be cutting edge in one of our other formats. And that's seeing the country pubs move on again.
So I think there's an expectation actually for some guests to continue to innovate and to offer stretch items. And people, as I said, people seem willing to do that and are trading up to core premium products. In terms of concerns over zero-hour contracts, I think that it's still unclear exactly what a labor government may or may not pursue. We don't operate zero-hour contracts, but we feel are at risk for us. I think there is a desire and an understanding that actually for some people having to be able to have that type of contract is a good way to, that's the way they want to operate.
I think from what the conversations we have with our trade body and with labor, there is still some debate to be had in that area, but I don't... We're not sort of seeing something that we're particularly concerned about in that space, no. In terms of living wage, Jeremy, I said it could be up to 10%. Would have thought our planning would be sort of somewhere between 7%-10%, probably. Remember, within that, it's now been extended to people who are over 21. There has to be at least a possibility, if not a real possibility, that it gets extended to the over 18 so on, which is going to average everything up. But that, that's just what we're planning on.
Obviously, that's significantly in excess of inflation, and we'd hope to get some of that back through the tills. If it ends up being less than that, well, great, then I'll be sitting here in a year's time telling you our cost governance is coming down. But we just think that's the right sort of level for us to plan on at the moment. Tim?
Thanks. So two things. Following up on that last one, your differential between 18-21 and over 21, is that basically the same as the Low Pay Commission, the differential? Just to gauge what might happen if the threshold is changed. And then the second small one is just around accommodation. I know you don't have too many bedrooms in the estate, but is there anything to call out on what's happening in refi terms or forward, forward looking on that?
I've got the last timely into the collection. We've got about 1,000 rooms. We have probably pretty much under the radar in the last five-six years refurbished all that room stock, so we now have a quality offering that we're proud about. And, you know, I suppose from my days back in Premier Lodge days, I you understand the advantages and synergies you get when you've got great accommodation alongside a good restaurant, and we're seeing that. We will, in time, I'm sure, look to add core rooms, but right now, we've seen that we've got quite a lot of call on our capital and the main things to get that refurbishment program on a seven-year cycle and maintain that.
So I think when in the not-too-distant future, we have a bit core cash, then I think we would look to expand out on the on accommodation. Accommodation itself is in good growth for us, which is, you know, it is, it's, I suppose we follow the sector as a whole. So, web power is good. And we're far better placed now. I think if we went back four or five years ago, we were fairly, we were sort of an add-on to what we did. We've now got a small team and kind of revenue management, yield management, play by location and see what's going on in that that locality. So yeah, we're really pleased with that. In terms of differential, so over 21s are on GBP 11.44 living wages.
I can't off the top of my head remember what over 18 is, likely a quid 15 less than that or something like that. And then you get to below, and it falls off quite a lot. But what, what we would have would reflect those strategy levels. 70% of our workforce are over 21, and about 20% are 18- 21. Right. So it gives you a feel for roughly how it, how it plays out.
That's really cool.
Any more questions? If not, thank you very much for your time. Thanks.