Diners’ £10 discount signals ‘new weekend’

Chancellor’s early-week meals scheme is hailed by trade, but some fear for sales on normally busy days

MONDAY to Wednesday is the new weekend, restaurants said, as they hailed the first day of the new discount scheme.

Restaurants reported a surge in bookings as Chancellor Rishi Sunak’s “Eat Out to Help Out” scheme, giving diners up to £10 off a meal and soft drinks, has helped feed demand. Social media users posted pictures of cutprice breakfasts on Monday morning, as major chains including JD Wetherspoon, Nando’s and Pizza Express signed up to offer the discount.

The majority of restaurants have embraced the scheme, the trade body UK Hospitality said, but some experts and owners raised concerns that it could lower demand at weekends.

The scheme applies from Monday to Wednesday throughout August and several firms reported an increase in bookings for those days.

A spokeswoman for Rick Stein’s restaurants said: “Monday to Wednesday looks like it will be the new weekend during August.” She said that at the firm’s high street restaurant in Winchester, 60 per cent of bookings for this week were for the first three days of the week, compared with just a third last week.

A spokesman for Fuller Smith & Turner, the parent company of Fuller’s pubs, said: “We have seen a definite upturn in bookings for the early part of the week.”

Greene King, the pub chain, said it had seen a “strong increase” in bookings this week.

Frederica D’incecco, of Tapas Brindisa Battersea, in London, said the restaurant had received many inquiries about the scheme and expected a large number of bookings and walkins. However, Mark Selby, of Wahaca, the Mexican restaurant chain, told Sky News that, while the scheme would provide a “shot of adrenalin” for the industry and had caused an uplift in bookings, it was not yet back to prepandemic levels.

Lubeck Sredojevic, who runs the Boulevard restaurant in Croydon, said that although his bookings from Monday to Wednesday had increased, demand at the weekend had gone down.

The Treasury said that 72,000 businesses had now signed up and that its online tool to check for local participating restaurants had received 3.3million hits. Research by UK Hospitality, the trade body, found that 84 per cent of restaurant businesses were planning on offering the discount.

The scheme entitles people to 50 per cent off their bill for food and non-alcoholic drinks up to a maximum of £10. There is no need to get a voucher as the discount is applied to the bill automatically. The discount is per person so a family of four can save up to £40.

However, Russell Nathan, an adviser to restaurants at HW Fisher, the accountancy firm, said some smaller, independent businesses had not welcomed it. “Restaurants fear that the discounting will actively encourage customers to spend less – to fit within the limits,” he said. “Many are already down to as little as 50 per cent capacity due to social distancing, so the last thing they can afford is significant reduction in the average customer spend.

“Then on top of that is the admin of processing it and the deferred reimbursement at a time when cash flow is critical to their weekly survival.”

Concerns have also been raised over the scheme at a time when the Government is trying to combat obesity.

The Treasury said the scheme was designed to boost demand at a time when it was usually low, and that administering it was supposed to be as simple as possible.

A spokesman said: “Eat Out to Help Out is designed to help protect the jobs of 1.8 million people who work in hospitality – a sector which has been badly hit by the outbreak.”

He added: “We encourage people to enjoy the scheme as part of a healthy and balanced lifestyle.”