Wetherspoon to open at 10am

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Leading article: Opening time

The pubs group JD Wetherspoon plans to boost sales by opening all its 610 pubs at 10am, an hour earlier than usual, to serve coffee and breakfast. Customers will not be able to buy alcohol until 11am because of the licensing laws.

The change is part of Wetherspoon's increased focus on food and non-alcoholic drinks. It confounded critics of this policy yesterday as the group said the move aided a 21 per cent jump in profits.

The company said the buoyant trend was continuing as "good summer weather" helped boost like-for-like sales in August by 5.9 per cent.

The group added its policy to allow accompanied children access to certain areas of its pubs at certain times had resulted in a "considerable" improvement in sales of food and soft drinks.

Wetherspoon posted a pre-tax profit of £53.6m in the year to 28 July, on sales up 24 per cent to £601.3m. Like-for-like sales rose 5 per cent.

Analysts at HSBC described the increase as impressive "when we consider the difficult London trading environment due to tourism, and the negative impact of the World Cup". Wetherspoon bans televisions from its pubs.

The figures contained few surprises. Wetherspoon had already warned in July that profits for the year might be toward the lower end of expectations, thanks to higher costs. Wetherspoon, which opened 87 pubs during the year down from 94 openings the year before, said yesterday another 25 sites were under construction while another 166 sites were under negotiation.