Catering spend jumps as office perks shift priorities

Catering spending by Spendesk's British business customers rose 56% in the first nine months of the year, even as overall card spending across the same group fell 4.8%.

The spend management company analysed settled card payments from 454 GB-registered customer businesses, comparing January to September 2026 with the same period in 2025. Catering spending rose to £285,000 from £183,000, while restaurant spending edged down 1% to £2.29 million.

Across restaurants, catering and food delivery platforms including Uber Eats and Deliveroo, total spending increased 3.2%. Within that combined food bill, catering's share rose from 6.5% to almost 10%.

Payments to City Pantry, now Just Eat for Business, rose 52%, suggesting more companies are bringing food into the workplace rather than relying solely on external restaurant spending. Spendesk linked the shift to employers' efforts to bring staff together in person more often.

The figures come amid wider concerns among employers over office attendance. KPMG's 2026 CEO Outlook found that 21% of leaders of large UK businesses saw resistance to returning to the office as one of their biggest workforce challenges.

Gifting shifts

The data also showed a change in how companies handle staff and client gifts. Voucher spending rose 27.5%, while spending on physical gifts fell 18.4% over the same period.

Vouchers accounted for almost 65% of the identifiable gifting budget, up from 54% a year earlier. Although fewer businesses bought vouchers, average spend rose from £155 to £211, suggesting larger purchases by those that did.

More traditional gift categories lost ground. Spending at Interflora fell 23%, while chocolate spending rose 7.8%.

Tony's Chocolonely recorded a 17.4% increase to £32,000 and accounted for nearly three-quarters of the chocolate total in the sample. Hotel Chocolat moved in the opposite direction, with spending down 23.4%.

Travel patterns

Business travel spending was broadly flat, falling 1.2% to £10.83 million, but the supplier mix changed. Spending with British Airways rose 7.7%, while easyJet fell 30.8% and Ryanair dropped 19.1%.

Airbnb spending in the sample also fell, declining 23.8%. At the same time, booking platforms attracted more of the travel budget, with spending in that category rising 16.9%.

TravelPerk stood out within that shift, recording a 46.8% rise in spending. Larger flight transactions also accounted for more of the total, with payments above £1,000 making up 51.1% of flight purchase spending, compared with 48.2% a year earlier.

The findings suggest top-line budgets may mask significant changes in where money is actually going. Food, gifts and travel all showed spending being redirected between categories and suppliers, even when overall totals changed only slightly.

"The headline budget can look reassuringly familiar while the way a business spends changes completely. Catering is growing, vouchers are taking a bigger share of gifting, and travel spending is moving between suppliers. Those are decisions about how people work and what the business values. Finance needs to see those changes as they happen. By the time you're explaining them at year-end, the money is already spent. Understanding where it's going gives you the opportunity to challenge a cost, back a good idea or adjust the next budget with confidence," said Axel Demazy, Chief Executive Officer, Spendesk.

The analysis covered settled card payments billed and charged in sterling, net of refunds, and excluded invoices and bank transfers. Suppliers were classified using merchant codes and descriptions, and the dataset covered customers with positive card spending across equivalent periods from 2024 to 2026.