The Restaurant Group serves up growth as ordered

The Restaurant Group, the owner of Frankie & Benny's, Garfunkel's and Chiquito eateries, said tasty like-for-like sales over the Christmas period have ensured that full year results will meet the market's forecasts for 'material growth'.

The company, which sites many of its outlets close to cinema multiplexes, said the outlook for 2015 and beyond was "very positive" thanks to growth in disposable consumer incomes, an increasing number of new site openings, and a considerably improved outlook for UK cinema performance.

Thanks to a two-week Christmas trading period that saw like-for-like sales growth of 5%, annual like-for-like sales to 28 December were up 2.8% on the prior year, with total sales 9.6% higher.

"The results will show material growth in both earnings and cash flow versus the prior year," TRG said in its statement to the stock market, although this is notwithstanding cost issues that it had noted in November.

Management said they were "very pleased" with how the 40 new restaurants opened in the new year were trading and said they "were set to deliver strong returns".

This was five more openings than the previous year, and a further acceleration to between 42 and 50 is expected this year.

After 2014's weakest year for cinema admissions for many years, TRG believes that a much stronger film release schedule and increasing real incomes in the UK will help the cinema industry enjoy significant recovery in 2015 and 2016.