Meal deals help Wetherspoon sales

See JD Wetherspoon's shares

Pub chain JD Wetherspoon says food and drink deals helped lure customers through its doors, despite the smoking ban introduced in England a year ago.

The group, which owns 700 pubs in the UK, saw like-for-like sales rise 0.4% over the past 11 weeks. Sales fell 1% over the year.

Profits have been under pressure since the start of the smoking ban.

The company also said it faced "considerable" rises in costs this year due to energy, food, labour and taxes.

Wage costs and taxes made up a "significant proportion" of these increases.

Wetherspoon estimates that it will face excise duty of about £10m in 2008/9, £4m costs from extra holiday entitlements and a further £5m bill as a result of the minimum wage.

However, sales were better than analysts had expected and shares rose 5%, or 9.5p, to 184.25 pence in morning trade.

About 60% of the group's trade is from food and drink associated with meals.

While bar sales have suffered following the smoking ban in England in last July, the firm has managed to boost food sales by increasing the size of non-smoking areas in its pubs.

So far in this financial year, the group has opened 23 new pubs in the UK.