Paper 0 · the count · published 01/10/2026
London’s Food Business Scorecard.
This briefing counts. It reports how many food companies were registered in London between 2018 and 2025, how many left the register, how they left, and how the picture differs by borough. No modelling, no survival analysis, no argument — those belong to the papers that follow.
Why this one matters.
Start here. It is the plainest of the four and the one every other paper leans on: a straight count of 119,220 companies carrying restaurant, café, takeaway or bakery classifications at London addresses. Nothing in it is contested, which is exactly why it is published first.
Two of the findings.
London formed more food companies than it lost in every single year
75,848 registered between 2018 and 2025 against 49,478 removed — a net addition of 26,370. That is a fact about the register rather than about the high street, a distinction Paper 1 spends its length on.
The format mix stepped up once, in 2020, and stayed there
Takeaway and bakery formats were 39.1 per cent of new registrations in 2018. In 2020 that jumped to 47.1 per cent, and it has settled at 43.3 per cent — permanently above the old level, but no longer climbing.
The paper carries 5 findings in all, with the method, the sources and every correction made before publication. It also gives the eight-year series year by year, the exit routes in full, and a table of all thirty-three boroughs.
Read it.
The whole paper is on this site, free and ungated. If you would rather have the typeset PDF, we will email it to you.
Roseworth Research is the research arm of Roseworth Limited, a Finchley accountancy practice. We act for businesses in this sector and have a commercial interest in the subject. The study uses public data only and no client information of any kind.