Diners rushed to their local cafes, bars and restaurants on Monday – the last day of the UK government’s hugely popular eat out to help out scheme.
Dubbed “going for a Rishi”, the half-price meal offer throughout August was launched by the chancellor, Rishi Sunak, to help preserve jobs in a sector that has been hard hit by Covid-19 lockdown.
Queues formed on Monday outside some restaurants, including Nando’s and McDonald’s, in city centres and high streets around the country, and three-hour waits for a table in a “virtual queue” via mobile apps were reported for other restaurants.
The scheme gave diners 50% off, up to £10 per person, on all food and non-alcoholic drink consumed from Monday to Wednesday at the 84,000 venues taking part in the scheme.
The initiative proved a lifeline for many struggling restaurants, some of which are continuing price promotions into September at their own expense as they fear autumn trading will be poor. Sunak has urged people to keep on eating out to “maintain the momentum to help continue our economic recovery”.
Several big restaurant chains as well as independently owned restaurants are offering a range of special deals during September to entice customers once the government-funded eat out to help out scheme ends.
Harvester, Stonehouse Pizza & Carvery and Toby Carvery, owned by the pub and restaurant group Mitchells & Butlers, will offer a 50% discount on main meals on Monday to Wednesday in the first two weeks of September.
The Prezzo chain is offering a two-course set menu for £10 from Monday to Wednesday in September.
Pizza Hut is offering two for one on main meals on those days for customers signed up to their database.
Tesco Café has 50% off its full menu between Monday and Wednesday in September, with no limits on the discount.
The pizza chain Franco Manca has decided to continue with 50% off on those days for the entire month.
The Revolution chain of bars has extended the 50% discount on food and soft drinks including mocktails from Monday until Wednesday all day throughout September.
The Gaucho chain of steak restaurants is also continuing the half-price offer from Monday to Wednesday for the entire month.
The Bill’s brasserie chain is offering up to 50% off its set menu from Monday to Wednesday from 11.30am throughout September. One course costs £10 while two courses are priced at £14.50.
Deliveroo will offer £5 off an order of £20 or more during the first three days of each week in September. The food delivery firm will offer cash off the first 100,000 orders at small restaurants each week in September.
The pub chain JD Wetherspoon is reducing its prices on a range of meals and drinks on the first three days of the week until 11 November.
Julia Kollewe
The Spanish tapas restaurant Escocesa in Stoke Newington, north London, advertised the eat out to help out scheme as “Tapas with the Tories”.
Juan Moreno, the restaurant manager, said he expected more than 200 covers by the end of the day on Monday. Normally, the restaurant serves 40 to 50 people a day but this surged to 120 on eat out to help out days.
“It’s been crazy the whole month,” he said. “The weekend was a bit quiet. People were coming from Monday to Wednesday because of the promotion.” Escocesa plans to offer its own discounts of 20% in September.
Vesa Popova, a 25-year-old account manager who was eating tapas with her friend Juliana Wang, 33, a user experience designer, said they had both used the meal offer “extensively” in August. “I don’t eat out very much [normally] but we are spending half-price on food, so may as well go out.”
Both were put on furlough during the pandemic and then made redundant but Wang starts a new job next Monday while Popova has a job interview the same day.
Lulu Jessica Shen, the owner of the nearby dim sum restaurant Lulu, said the initiative had been a big help but she was worried about what would come next. Eat out to help out has brought new customers to her restaurant, while her regulars are too afraid to go out, she said.
“People are saying ‘I like the food’ but can’t afford to come back.” The number of eat out to help out meals served at her restaurant rose steadily from 300 in the first week of the scheme to 490 last week.
Over at the Sublime pizzeria near Manor House in north London, Charlie Gilmartin, and Richard Eversden, both 36, were having pizza with their toddler. They had been on their way home after a walk in the Woodberry wetlands when they spotted the eat out to help out sign at Sublime and spontaneously decided to eat out.
“For £20 we can all eat out together when it’s normally £30 or £40. It’s a big saving,” Eversden said.
The Treasury initially costed the initiative at £500m but its popularity is likely to push the final total above that. Diners had already claimed more than 64m eat out to help out meals – the equivalent of one for almost every person in the country – by the first three weeks of August, according to figures published by the government last week.
