Evaluation of the impact of a levy on added-sugar soft drinks on sales and purchasing behaviour within Jamie’s Italian restaurants

On the 1 September 2015, Jamie’s Italian, a national chain of UK restaurants, added a £0.10 levy to the price of non-alcoholic SSBs sold within them. The levy can be seen as a complex ‘intervention’ comprising a fiscal component (a price rise) in combination with other non-fiscal components that could plausibly help reduce purchases of SSBs. We used this natural experiment to assess whether the implementation of the levy in combination with non-price activities (for convenience referred to as the ‘intervention’) is associated with changes in sales of non-alcoholic beverages.

Consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs) is associated with obesity, type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease and dental caries. In recent years, there has been increasing interest in the use of fiscal measures as instruments to reduce the consumption of SSBs as part of wider population-based strategies to prevent non-communicable disease. However, there is limited primary evidence on the effectiveness of fiscal measures on either the sale or consumption of SSBs.

This study evaluates changes in sales of non-alcoholic beverages in Jamie’s Italian, a national chain of commercial restaurants in the UK, following the introduction of a £0.10 per-beverage levy on sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs) and supporting activity including beverage menu redesign, new products and establishment of a children’s health fund from levy proceeds.

The introduction of a levy on SSBs alongside complementary activities is associated with declines in SSB sales per customer in the short and medium term.