RE: Meal claims for market research for restauranteur

I run a restaurant with my partner - both of us are company directors. We regularly eat out at local competitors as genuine market research to understand the type of food (not possible to ascertain just from reading the menu), quality and value, to assess levels of service and ambience especially during busy times, and to pick up tips and ideas which we can, and do regularly deploy in our own restaurant, sometimes relating to food and drink, sometimes to decor or staff procedures. We would not usually eat out some of the venues, some of which are more (and some less) expensive than we go to on the rare occasions we have time to eat out for personal reasons. Given the meal is taken wholly in pursuit of our duties as company directors in the name of market research to constantly improve our business offering and to monitor our standards and offering against our competitors, is this an allowable expense? If not, why would this differ from a producer of, say, toys, purchasing samples of competitors products in order to research the competition?

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