Know whether it was your quiet month, or everyone's.

TheatreOps Monthly is a food and beverage benchmark for UK theatre and arts venues, built from live POS data. It tells you how the sector actually traded last month, so your own figures finally have something to sit against. Free, monthly, by email.

Get the monthly benchmark Add your venue to the panel

Real figures, from a matched panel of venues

Every number is a movement or a ratio. No venue is named and no revenue or transaction total is ever printed, which is what makes it safe for everyone taking part.

From the August 2026 edition

+1.6% The median venue, year on year The middle of the sector. The average was +7.4%, and the gap between the two is the story: growth was concentrated, not broad.
£8.65 Spend per transaction at the typical venue The sector average was £10.05, pulled up by the larger venues, which is why we publish both: the average tells you how the sector traded, the median tells you where a venue like yours sits.
40% The interval premium The interval part of a bill runs around 40% above a whole average transaction at the same venues. Where it is ordered, at the bar or in an app, makes no difference to its size.

This is the part no single venue can produce for itself. Your own reporting tells you what happened at your bar. It cannot tell you whether a soft month was yours alone.

Six things, every month

  1. The month's movement How the sector traded against last month and against the same month last year, on a matched panel so the comparison holds.
  2. Your region North, South, Midlands and London, with both an average and a median, because the two answer different questions.
  3. Your size band Venues grouped by seating capacity, so a 400 seat house is not measured against a 2,000 seat one.
  4. Two sector indicators The share of venues growing year on year, and the movement at the median venue. Published together, always, because each is misleading alone.
  5. Interval ordering How much of a bill is interval spend, the split between orders taken at the bar and placed in an app, and how many venues are taking them at all. Nobody else in the sector publishes this.
  6. A feature snapshot One question answered properly each month, with the method shown, including the bits the data cannot settle.

Monthly, plus a quarterly review that reads the trend rather than the month, and an annual one that sets the year in context.

One row a month. That is all we take.

Three steps, once a month, and nothing about your customers, your cards, your tickets or your staff at any point.

1 Your monthly totals Net sales, the wet and dry split, transactions, VAT and refunds. READ ONLY · ONCE A MONTH 2 Name off, pooled Keyed on an ID and grouped by region and by size band. MIN. FIVE VENUES PER FIGURE 3 Benchmarks back to you Averages, medians and movements across the panel. NO VENUE NAMED, NO TOTALS Never read: customer data, card details, ticketing, staff hours, or any individual sale.
  1. Your monthly totalsNet sales, the wet and dry split, transactions, VAT and refunds.Read only · once a month
  2. Name off, pooledKeyed on an ID and grouped by region and by size band.Min. five venues per figure
  3. Benchmarks back to youAverages, medians and movements across the panel.No venue named, no totals

Never read: customer data, card details, ticketing, staff hours, or any individual sale.

Example row, made up figures
Period2026-08
Net sales£48,223
Wet / dry / misc31,400 / 14,923 / 1,900
Transactions5,680
VAT£9,645
Refunds£186
Venueanon

That is the row. One per venue, per month, with the name set aside. There is no view of a single night, a single till or a single sale.

Put plainly

What we take Monthly totals, once a month. Net sales, the wet and dry split, how many transactions, and the housekeeping figures like VAT and refunds. Nothing below a monthly total.
What we never take Nothing about people. Not customers, not staff. No names, no email addresses, no card details, no ticketing or booking data, no staff hours or pay, and no individual sales. We do not ask for any of it, from anyone.
What you get back The sector's numbers, every month, free. Your region, your size band, the median venue, spend per transaction with the full spread around it. Your own venue is never named in any of it.
The longer explanation

We want your data. Here is why.

A benchmark is only as good as the number of venues in it. With a handful you get noise. With enough you get something you can actually run a bar against, cut by region and by size, with a median that means something.

So we are building the front of house dataset the sector has been missing, and the monthly benchmark goes back to everyone free, and stays free. No data is sold on to anyone, and the reason is simple, the benchmark only works if venues are in it, and putting a price on reading it would keep out exactly the venues that make it accurate.

Send it

We give you a monthly template with every field defined, so your figures mean the same as everyone else's. Fill it in, email it over, a few minutes once a month.

Or let us read it

We query your existing POS reporting system for the same summary line, once a month, read only. You set it up once and never think about it again.

In return you get every edition, the quarterly review and the annual one, and a benchmark that gets sharper every time another venue joins. Your figures are never named, never published as absolutes, and never shown to another operator.

Talk to us about adding your venue

A benchmarking platform you log into

The newsletter is the first version of something bigger. We are building a platform venues sign into, so instead of reading one set of sector averages a month you can put your own venue against the panel whenever you want, on the cuts that matter to you: your region, your size band, your wet and dry split, your interval trade.

It is in development and there is no date on it yet, which is deliberate. The benchmark has to be right before the software around it is worth anything.

Tell us what you would want from it