The weekâs labour market figures, the last inflation reading before the Bankâs decision, and fresh deal data from the food and drink sector, with our read on what each means for a founder-led brand.
The hiring market has shifted toward employers. Pay-planning assumptions set a year ago deserve a fresh look.
The labour market figures published on 21 July show a market that has continued to loosen. Regular pay grew by 3.4% in the year to March to May 2026, and unemployment stood at 4.9% over the same period. The number of payrolled employees fell by 85,000, or 0.3%, between May 2025 and May 2026, and vacancies eased again to 712,000 in April to June, down 7,000 on the quarter.
The useful reading for a founder is what this does to the balance of the hiring conversation. A year ago regular pay was growing at 5.0%, and pay budgets were set with retention risk in mind. With pay growth cooling, fewer payrolled roles and vacancies still falling, the market has moved toward the employer, and assumptions carried forward from last yearâs conditions are worth re-examining rather than rolling over.
That does not make aggressive pay restraint the answer. Pay growth of 3.4% is still real money against inflation in the high twos, and the people who matter most to a small team are precisely the ones a loosening market does not make easier to replace. The practical move is narrower: separate the roles where the market has genuinely softened, and where recruitment is now cheaper and quicker than it was, from the handful of people whose departure would set the business back a year. Budget differently for the two.
If your pay and hiring budget was set in a different market, Phoenix can help you pressure-test it against this one.
Sources: ONS, Labour market overview, UK: July 2026, 21 July 2026; ONS, Labour market overview, UK: July 2025, 17 July 2025
The headline is moving the right way. The parts of inflation that keep rates where they are, services and core, barely moved at all.
The Consumer Prices Index rose by 2.6% in the 12 months to June 2026, down from 2.8% the previous month, in figures published on 22 July. On the month, prices rose 0.1%, against 0.3% in June last year. The largest downward contribution came from transport, particularly motor fuels. Beneath the headline, the stickier measures moved much less: the all-services index rose 3.6% in the 12 months to June, down only slightly from 3.7%, with restaurants and hotels pulling upward, and core inflation, which strips out energy, food, alcohol and tobacco, was unchanged at 2.6%.
When we covered the June rate decision, the picture was a Bank holding at 3.75% while services inflation climbed. This release softens that picture without reversing it. The headline easing is real, and it is the last inflation reading the Monetary Policy Committee sees before its decision on 30 July. But services at 3.6% and core flat at 2.6% are the numbers a cautious committee will point to, and neither gives it a clean case to cut. Two members voted for a rise as recently as June. A founderâs plan that quietly assumes cheaper borrowing from August onwards is resting on a coin toss, not a trend.
The more durable reading is about your own cost base. What is falling is goods-flavoured: fuel and inputs. What is not falling is services, which in a founder-led business means the wage-linked costs, the agencies, the software, the logistics handling. If your pricing assumptions were built when everything was inflating together, it is worth re-checking them against a world where your input costs ease but your service costs keep compounding at three and a half percent. The gap between those two lines is where margin quietly goes.
If your plan leans on a rate cut that may not come, a Discovery Call is a good place to test it.
Source: ONS, Consumer price inflation, UK: June 2026, 22 July 2026
Acquirers pay for the things that make a health brand strong to run. The deal data now says so directly.
Research from law firm Pinsent Masons, reported on 21 July, counted 78 M&A deals in the UK food and drink sector, up 18% year on year, with disclosed deal values rising 25% to ÂŁ5.5 billion from ÂŁ4.4 billion. Private equity was involved in 16 of those deals, around 20% of transactions, down from 18 deals and 27% the year before, meaning trade buyers did more of the running. The draw is functional health: Danoneâs acquisition of Huel, and MĂŒllerâs purchases of the kefir brand Biotiful Gut Health and the snack brand Graze, are the deals cited, and the research notes that around two-thirds of Gen Z and millennial consumers bought functional nutrition products in the last year.
We covered the DanoneâHuel deal in June, and the new numbers confirm it was not a one-off. Large food groups are buying growth they have struggled to build internally, and the growth they want is sitting in functional and wellness brands, the category most Baseline readers operate in. Consumer pull is doing the underwriting: when two-thirds of the youngest adult cohorts are already buying functional nutrition, an acquirer is purchasing a position in a demand shift, not betting on one.
The founderâs reading is not that a sale is around the corner, but that the qualities acquirers pay for are the same ones that make a business strong to run in the meantime. Clean, current numbers a buyer could diligence without archaeology. Margins that are understood by product and channel. A brand and formulation that belong to the company rather than to a founderâs head. Revenue that repeats. None of these are exit preparations; they are the operating disciplines that also happen to set the price if the phone rings. With trade buyers active and values rising, the businesses that get rewarded are the ones that were already run as if someone might look.
Source: Food Manufacture, reporting Pinsent Masons research, 21 July 2026
A third week in the high mountains, and a different lesson from this one: on ground this steep, the result is decided on the climbs, and the winners are the ones who put their effort where the course actually moves.
The Eiger Ultra Trail ran at Grindelwald in the Swiss Alps on 18 July, its flagship E101 covering 101 kilometres with some 6,700 metres of climbing beneath the Eigerâs north face. Norwayâs Stian Dahl Sommerseth won the menâs race in 11 hours 44 minutes, ahead of Germanyâs Manuel Hartweg in 11:56. Polandâs Alina Wylezalek took the womenâs race in 14 hours 1 minute, with Switzerlandâs Daniela Mackner second in 14:24.
A course with 6,700 metres of climbing packed into 101 kilometres has little flat ground, its long climbs and technical descents broken only by a few faster valley stretches, and that changes what racing it well means. Time is not spread evenly around the route. It is won and lost on the long climbs, where the gradient exposes any gap in strength, and merely protected everywhere else. The runners on the podium were not the ones who pushed hardest everywhere; they were the ones who knew which sections would decide the day and had built themselves for those.
A trading year has the same shape. The result is not made evenly across twelve months: it is made in a handful of steep sections, the peak trading window, the key renewal, the launch, the funding conversation, and merely protected in between. Effort and cash spread uniformly across the year is effort taken away from the climbs that decide it. The discipline is knowing, in advance, which weeks are the mountain, and arriving at them with capacity to spend.
Phoenix works with founders on exactly that map: a financial plan that shows where the year is actually decided, so the business turns up to its steep sections with something in reserve.
Sources: UTMB, Eiger Ultra Trail E101 2026 results; UTMB, E101 race information
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