The new restaurant hype lasts for just 100 days
The roller-coaster for new restaurant openings, lasts for just 100 days, before the foodies move on to the hot new thing.
Establishing a restaurant is a tough business, and the recent closure of Manu Feidel’s Le Grand Cirque showed us that its hard market in Australia for even the top celebrity chefs. With the backing of George Calombaris’s MAdE Establishment group and an established profile the Channel 7’s My Kitchen Rules, you would assume if anyone can make a success Feidel could.
The restaurant announced it was to close only 16 weeks after its opening. Interestingly when analysing the “opening hype” enjoyed by new restaurants, it appeared that the hype was a short-lived 15 weeks / 105 days only. Dimmi found that newly opened restaurants benefited from a media and booking boom, but then literally bang on 15 weeks, demand drops 24% to establish a new norm.
The dive from week 15 is however different in Melbourne and Sydney. In Sydney it takes four weeks for people to drop off dining in the venue while Melbourne very quickly move on to the next best thing with the venue crashing in just two short weeks.
Victorians pay the lowest nationally for their meals with an average of $53.00. Since July 2012 Victoria has not breeched the $55 per person price point, while the National average over this time is $56.80.
Some restaurants buck this trend, like Ester in Chippendale (just voted best new restaurant by the Good Food Guide), Cho Cho San in Potts Point and Mr Miyagi in St Kilda, Melbourne which all appear to be going from strength to strength.
Melbourne sees changes at a more rapid rate than anywhere else in Australia. Are Melbournians even more fickle than Sydneysiders when it comes to their love of new restaurants?