NE1’s Newcastle Restaurant Week celebrated its 5th birthday in style in January with phenomenal results from all 88 participating restaurants and a £400k boost in sales.
From Monday 18th to Sunday 24th January, participating restaurants across the city centre joined to take part in restaurant week – which creates a major buzz within the city’s restaurants at what is considered to be the quietest times of the year. Across the restaurants there was an average 12% rise in sales compared to the event in January last year, with over 35K vouchers redeemed.
Las Iguanas on Grey Street has taken part in every NE1’s Restaurant Week since it opened in Newcastle four years ago. The two-story restaurant was fully booked throughout the week and had to open both floors at lunchtime to accommodate diners. Fat Hippo, which itself celebrated its 5th birthday in January, had a huge spike in visitor numbers with over 1036 of those taking advantage of the event.
The experience at both venues was echoed across all 80 plus venues participating in the event.
Speaking about the success of NE1’s Newcastle Restaurant Week event, Rachael Graham, General Manager of Las Iguanas said: “The event is always a great success for Las Iguanas but this year we were sold out every day of the week.
“The event causes a great buzz in the city with restaurants busy and people keen to eat out at as many venues as possible.
“A mark of how successful NE1’s Restaurant Week is in generating custom is that we had a full house all week, with over 1,503 cover compared to 977 people the previous week.”
Matt Leatham, General Manager at the Fat Hippo echoed these sentiments when he said: ” We’re a busy restaurant anyway, but NE1’s Newcastle Restaurant Week has boosted our visitors by a further 24%.”
The week continues to grow in popularity and another date has been set for the event between the 8-14 August.