Christmas comes early in foodservice. For suppliers to the catering industry, like Brakes, it comes even earlier.

Booker's sales to caterers may be far smaller than its sales to retailers, but with 258,000 catering customers spending £850m in the last year it is still one of the biggest players in the sector. And while the decline in sales to retailers has proved harder to arrest, its latest results for the year to March 28 show sales to caterers grew by 2.2%.