Café Rouge makes pledge to be more accessible to its customers

Extensive research will conducted across Café Rouge’s estate, analysing the existing facilities in order to draw up Detailed Access Guides for the group.  

The guides will detail the facilities available across the French restaurant group’s 70-strong, UK-wide estate, ranging from car parking spaces and accessible toilets to hearing loops and lighting levels helping the UK’s thirteen million disabled people, and seven million carers, make informed decisions on where best to dine and enjoy their restaurant visits. They will be available via both the Café Rouge and through online accessibility guide AccessAble via its website and free app.

“We recognised that three out of four people with access needs will not visit a new place unless they have the confidence that such guides can bring,” says Greg Gibbons, brand director at Café Rouge. “We’re proud to be the first major restaurant business to take the progressive step of increasing awareness of accessibility across our estate and to be supporting issues faced by millions of people across the UK.”

AccessAble aims to help people with a wide range of accessibility requirements including visual and mobility impairments, autism, mental health issues and long-term health conditions. The guides are also designed to help others with access needs, such as parents with prams or the elderly needing to know more about walking distances or areas to rest. It already works with high street retailers including Marks & Spencer and Next, the majority of universities, major shopping centres and many other key leisure and tourist destinations.

“We’re thrilled to be partnering with Café Rouge and encouraged by their understanding of its customer appeal and requirements,” says AccessAble chairman Barry Stevenson. “For those that wish to dine at Café Rouge ‘access begins online’ will soon become a reality.”