Wetherspoon pub group works to win back the punters

March 18 (Reuters) - British pub group J D Wetherspoon expects sales to recover to pre-pandemic levels this year, provided pandemic restrictions are not re-imposed, and is working with suppliers to curb the impact of inflation, Chairman Tim Martin said on Friday.

Even as the highly infectious Omicron variant of the coronavirus has swept Britain, Wetherspoons over the last three weeks saw sales only 2.6% below the same period in 2019 before COVID-19 took hold.

But the loss-making group, which runs more than 800 pubs in the United Kingdom and Ireland, faces the challenge of rising costs as the British economy deals with inflation at 30-year highs.

Martin, via text messages with Reuters, said the company will work with suppliers to provide offers for customers that will be competitive "in spite of pricing pressures".

While Britain's hospitality sector has begun to recover from the severe impact of COVID, analysts say the uncertainty surrounding the war in Ukraine is a new blow to consumer confidence.

"Despite high hopes that punters would once again be elbowing each other to get to the bar, the glass is very much half empty for the company, with pre-COVID levels of profits remaining elusive," Hargreaves Lansdown analyst Susannah Streeter said.

Wetherspoon, called simply Spoons by many younger customers, reported a loss of 21.3 million pounds ($28 million) in the six months to Jan. 23, compared with a profit of 57.9 million pounds a year earlier.

"Draconian restrictions, which amount to a lockdown-by-stealth, are, of course, kryptonite for hospitality, travel, leisure and many other businesses," Martin, who has been an outspoken critic of the British government's handling of the health crisis, said in the first-half results statement.

Martin said Wetherspoon stopped selling Baltika beer from Russia after the country's invasion of Ukraine.

Danish brewer Carlsberg, which owns Baltika, Russia's largest beer brand, last week began a strategic review of its business in the country. ($1 = 0.7608 pounds) (Reporting by Shanima A in Bengaluru; Editing by Vinay Dwivedi, Toby Chopra and Barbara Lewis)