Livebookings partners with London Restaurant Festival
The festival, which last year had the involvement of over 600 restaurants, serves to highlight the capital’s diverse eating out market through a series of Festival Menus, pop-up restaurants and Gourmet Odyssey food tours.
The new partnership with the online reservations service will see the Festival Menus, a major feature of LRF, simpler to book and promoted to a larger audience than previous years.
Colin Tenwick, chief executive of Livebookings, said: “Livebookings is delighted to be the exclusive online reservations partner of the Festival, and by leveraging our consumer brand Bookatable, we’ll give the hundreds of restaurants that take part greater access to the huge community that searches for and books restaurants online.
“Our expertise in how to effectively target consumers through online marketing and track record in getting customers through the door will help make attendance at this year’s event bigger than ever before.”
New for this year
New additions to the LRF this year include three new, more affordable Gourmet Odysseys, including the Tapas Trail, which will take in six restaurants arpund London over the course of one weekend. Diners will be given a “passport” and with each stamp will be given a plate of tapas and a drink at each venue.
Simon Davis, director and co-founder of LRF said: “Up until now the Odyssey has tended to be around Mayfair and Michelin-starred restaurants, but we wanted to create something for people with smaller budgets in Clerkenwell and Soho too.”
Also new this year will be a series of supplier markets situated at train station concourses around London. Suppliers exhibiting at each station will have come from areas down the connected railway lines.
“It’s our view that the London restaurant scene is a beating heart but without all the suppliers throughout the UK there’s no way it would be as vibrant as it is, so we plan to showcase them,” added Davis.
“The main benefit for restaurants to be involved is that we’re creating something in London during a very specific two week period where there is a critical mass and focus of attention on the London restaurant scene. It means the LRF isn’t just a restaurant promotion, a buy-one-get-one-free or two-for-one offer, it’s much more creative, fun and engaging than that.
“In essence we’re trying to create a culinary equivalent of the Edinburgh festival.”
The LRF will also see the return of the London Eye pop-up restaurants, in which Gordon Ramsay and Angela Hartnett participated last year, as well as a number of high profile pop-up restaurants.
Restaurant operators interested in being a part of this year’s festival can now register their interest at www.londonrestaurantfestival.co.uk. Businesses do not have to be a member of Livebookings or American Express, the festival’s headline sponsor, to participate.
