Spendesk analysed corporate card spending from 454 UK businesses to uncover how company spending habits changed in the first nine months of 2026.
Company spending fell 4.8%, but the biggest changes are happening within individual spending categories.
Catering spend surged 56%, suggesting businesses are investing more in shared workplace experiences.
Traditional corporate gifts are losing favour, with spending on flowers falling 28% and hampers dropping 40%.
Business travel is changing, with larger flight purchases accounting for a growing share of spending, even as overall travel budgets remain relatively stable.
From office lunches and employee rewards to airline bookings, the data reveals which spending habits are changing, and which brands are winning or losing out.
What's making the cut on the company card?
2026 has been a year of change. From rapid AI adoption to return-to-office mandates, businesses are rethinking how they work and where their money goes. But the overall bill doesn't always tell the full story.
Spendesk analysed corporate card transactions from 454 UK businesses, comparing January to September 2026 with the same period in 2025. While overall GBP-billed card spending fell from £56.32m to £53.61m, the research reveals some surprising changes in how businesses are spending on food, employee gifting and travel.
From the office buffet to the business-class lounge, familiar spending categories are telling a very different story. So what's making the cut on the company card, and what's falling out of favour?
Food, glorious food
The company-funded meal is holding its own. Across restaurants, catering and identified food-delivery platforms, spending remained relatively steady, increasing 3.2% compared with the same period last year.
But catering is having a considerably better year than that headline suggests. Spending jumped 56%, with purchase numbers increasing 30.3% and approximate spending per purchase rising 19.7%, from £324 to £388.
Whether it's breakfast for the team or lunch for a company workshop, businesses appear to be allocating more of their food budgets to organised catering.
A catered team day or workshop involves a different purchasing decision from someone booking a table for a few colleagues. It can bring more people together, with the menu and budget agreed in advance.
There is a wider workplace context, too. KPMG research published in October 2026 found that 21% of leaders of large UK businesses identified resistance to returning to the office as one of their biggest workforce challenges.
For colleagues who usually catch up through a screen, a shared meal can give a team day something to gather around beyond the meeting agenda.
For colleagues who usually catch up through a screen, a shared meal can give a team day something to gather around beyond the meeting agenda.
What about a 'proper' lunch out?
If you prefer to sit down with a menu and your colleagues, never fear. Restaurants, cafés and private dining still take the lion’s share of the bill, accounting for 79% of spending across restaurants, catering and delivery.
Spending dipped just 1% compared with the same period last year, so a free lunch on the corporate card is hardly off the menu. With that small decline, you can confidently pitch your next working lunch as a contribution to the hospitality sector.
Big thank you? Big voucher
We should be grateful that the ‘thank-you’ budget has survived. Across voucher providers, florists, chocolate and gift specialists, spending increased 6.3%, from approximately £280,400 to £298,100.
But what arrives is changing. Spending on flowers, chocolate, hampers and gift specialists combined fell 18.4%, while vouchers rose 27.5% to £192,400. Vouchers now account for 64.5% of spending across these four gifting groups, up from 53.8% in the same period last year.
Flowers show a particularly clear change. Spending fell 28%, with 237 businesses buying bouquets last year compared with 209 this year.
Interflora spending dropped 23%. Bloom & Wild proved more resilient, holding almost steady with a decline of just 1%.
Hampers and gift specialists, including Not On The High Street, experienced a sharper spending decline: down 40.3%.Chocolate, however, is keeping its place. Spending rose 7.8%, despite purchases falling 41%. Average purchase value increased from £167 to £307, a rise of approximately 84%. Looks like those orders could involve more than just two trays.
And in a boon for the challenger brands, Tony’s Chocolonely spending rose 17.4%, taking its share of chocolate spending from 67% to 73%. Hotel Chocolat moved the other way, falling 23.4%.
Choice, convenience and the personal touch:
The appeal of vouchers is easy to understand: let the recipient choose, without the dietary detective work or delivery coordination.
The 27.5% spending increase came from fewer, bigger purchases. Average purchase value rose from £155 to £211, even as purchase numbers fell 6.6% and the number of businesses buying dropped 17.6%.
Spending on multi-retailer vouchers, such as One4all and Love2shop, rose 34.9%, while experience and travel gift vouchers, including ExperienceGift, Virgin Experience Days and TUI Gift Cards, fell 30%.
Fewer businesses bought in each gifting category, but the overall budget grew. Perhaps the company thank-you is becoming a more organised affair: a batch of vouchers or a bulk chocolate order, with fewer individual deliveries along the way.
While spending might look similar on the surface, priorities are changing. Knowing exactly where the money is going helps finance teams plan the next budget around those changes.
Upgrading business travel
The travel budget hasn’t gone far: spending slipped just 1.2%, from £10.96m to £10.83m. Some of the individual bills, however, are getting harder to overlook.
Flight purchases above £1,000 now account for more than half of flight purchase spending: 51.1%, up from 48.2% a year earlier. Their share grew even as total flight purchases fell 8.6%.
Meanwhile, spending on hotel purchases above £5,000 rose approximately 25% to £270,600, despite overall hotel spending falling 8.4%.
That leaves finance looking at two quite different sorts of purchase: the everyday booking and the substantial commitment.
A large payment could cover a whole team or an extended stay, so it deserves some context before anyone starts asking who ordered the presidential suite. For dispersed teams, planned gatherings are one possible explanation. Customer visits, conferences and longer assignments offer others.
The overall travel bill looks relatively familiar. Knowing who travelled, for how long and why helps finance understand what has changed underneath, and what to budget for next.
Where do the airlines land?
Business travel is holding its place on the corporate card, but the budget airlines aren’t the ones gaining ground.
British Airways spending rose 7.7% to £1.14m, while easyJet fell 30.8% and Ryanair dropped 19.1%. Accommodation saw familiar names lose ground too: Airbnb spending declined 23.8%, while Travelodge fell 38.6%.
For a business traveller, the cheapest advertised price can come with other costs: an awkward airport transfer, another night away or less time with the customer. Timings, flexibility and convenience all have a place in the booking decision.
Booking arrangements are changing too. Spending through travel agencies and booking platforms increased 16.9%, while direct flight and hotel spending fell. TravelPerk gained 46.8%, from £1.48m to £2.17m.
A platform payment can cover services that might otherwise appear against an airline or hotel, so lower direct spending doesn’t necessarily mean less travel. Finance needs a view of both to understand how the budget is being used.
Businesses still have choices about where the money goes, and several familiar low-cost names are finding themselves on the losing side.
How Spendesk helps make the company budget work harder
A food bill up 3.2%. A travel budget down 1.2%. Neither suggests much has changed, until you look at what businesses are buying.
Knowing what a purchase was for makes it easier to judge the bill. A £5,000 hotel payment looks rather different when it covers a whole team, and a catering order makes more sense when you know who came to lunch.
Spendesk’s spend management software brings payments, approvals and reporting together, giving finance teams the spend visibility to understand those changes and plan around them.
It helps teams agree budgets with colleagues and set up the approvals around them. Spending limits can vary by category, with larger requests sent to the right person for sign-off. Routine purchases within the agreed rules can pass automatically, depending on the configuration.
This finance automation saves time on administration, while spending insights help teams decide what to do next. Colleagues know what they can spend and when to ask. Finance can discuss whether a team event was worth repeating or a travel budget needs adjusting, with the detail already to hand.
That’s what working better and spending smarter looks like: less time piecing together what happened, and more time making informed decisions about the next budget.
The picture is mixed. Overall spending on the sterling-charged basis analysed fell 4.8%, but combined food spending rose 3.2% and identifiable gifting increased 6.3%. Travel spending slipped 1.2%. Within those totals, changes in suppliers and purchasing habits were considerably more pronounced.
What is happening to business gifting?
Spending on flowers, chocolate and hampers combined fell 18.4%, while voucher spending increased 27.5%. Vouchers now account for 64.5% of spending across the four identified gifting groups, up from 53.8%. Chocolate bucked the wider physical-gift decline, growing 7.8%.
Does a larger travel payment mean a better trip?
A larger payment can cover several travellers, more nights, higher prices or a different booking arrangement. Understanding the people and purpose behind it helps finance assess what the business received for its money.
How can finance teams compare larger purchases fairly?
Record relevant details, such as attendees, travellers or nights, alongside the payment. This helps teams distinguish a larger group booking from a higher individual cost and make useful comparisons when planning future spending.
What should businesses look for in budget management software?
Useful budget management software connects spending by team, category and supplier with approvals, spending limits and reporting. Finance teams need enough detail to understand changes within the total, spot unexpected costs and adjust budgets as priorities evolve.
Sample and method
This report follows a matched sample of 454 GB-registered Spendesk customer companies, selected for their established spending history. They form part of Spendesk’s wider UK customer base.
We compared January–September 2026 with the same period in 2025. Following the same businesses and calendar months provides a consistent basis for examining changes in purchasing behaviour. Companies qualified by recording positive card spending in each January–September period in 2024, 2025 and 2026. The comparison itself covers 2025 and 2026; company entities may share a parent organisation.
Payment data
The main analysis uses settled, GBP-billed corporate cards transactions where merchants are also charged in GBP. Spending is reported in pounds, net of refunds. This includes overseas services charged in sterling, so currency does not establish where a purchase took place.
Categories and comparisons
Merchant category codes, payment descriptions and supplier research inform the classifications, with the same rules applied to both years. Identifiable supplier-name variations are grouped together.
Catering covers prepared-food catering services for workplaces and events, with equipment, restaurant dining, mixed venue hospitality and unresolved payments classified separately. Restaurants include cafés and private dining. Food-delivery platforms are identified separately to avoid overlap: City Pantry, now Just Eat for Business, is classified as catering, while payments identified as Just Eat sit within delivery.
Gifting covers voucher providers, florists, chocolate and hamper/gift specialists, including Not On The High Street. Mixed department-store spending is kept separate. Travel platforms are reported separately where their underlying services cannot be identified.
Reading the figures
Purchase counts exclude refunds. Travel purchase-value distributions and gifting averages use gross purchase amounts. Approximate catering spending per purchase divides net spending by purchase count. Per-business catering averages use businesses buying catering in the relevant period.
Figures reflect actual prices paid, without an inflation adjustment. A purchase can cover multiple meals, gifts, travellers or nights. The analysis describes purchasing patterns within this Spendesk panel; workplace explanations provide context rather than measured causes.
The research covers card payments recorded through Spendesk, with invoices, bank transfers and spending outside the platform outside its scope.
Who's winning the company spend?
Unlock the full report to discover the brands gaining ground and where UK business budgets are shifting.
For the past 10+ years, I’ve experienced diverse data roles in consulting, scale-ups, and international companies. My hands-on capabilities are balanced by several management experiences within fast-paced, growing businesses.
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