Fall Restaurant Week smaller, but busy
Maine Restaurant Week, a two-year-old event where restaurants offer three-course specials for a week in March, expanded into the fall for the first time. Last week, 60 restaurants participated, more than half of them in and around Portland.
The event, started and coordinated by gBritt PR, a Portland media relations company, was founded to stimulate business during the wintery months when restaurants see more empty tables. "This event is a shoulder-season initiative that drives new customers right into the restaurant," says Jim Britt of gBritt PR, explaining that in Maine, the shoulder season encompasses all the months between Labor Day and Memorial Day.
This fall, however, the number of restaurants signing up and paying the $200 fee was down from the March restaurant weeks in 2010 and 2009. In March 2010, 115 restaurants participated, 63 from the Portland area. And in 2009, 70 restaurants joined, 49 in southern Maine.
Britt says he expected a smaller number of participants this October, and was happy with the final roster of restaurants. After surveying restaurant owners and managers last March, Britt says he heard from many that they would appreciate having two restaurant weeks per year.
And at least one restaurant, Twenty Milk Street, found that the fall event, which ran from Oct. 24 to Oct. 31, was more successful than the winter one. "We were probably 20% busier in the fall than in the winter," restaurant Manager Carolyn Ferraro says. Restaurant weeks are helpful in general, she says, because as a hotel dining room, Twenty Milk Street gets less foot traffic than street-side restaurants, so it relies on destination diners. She surmises, too, that because fewer restaurants participated this fall, her restaurant might have attracted more of the diners wanting to take advantage of fixed-price menus.
Both Ferraro and Britt say that the restaurants that opted out this time probably did so for a variety of reasons. "Some restaurants are still busy," Britt says, and are coming off months of glorious weather that helped make business brisk. "They're completely exhausted from summer, and don't want to contemplate another busy week." But by March, he adds, "We're all cabin crazy, and restaurants are chomping at the bit."
Ferraro says, too, that restaurants may have been wiped out from coming off another culinary festival, Harvest on the Harbor. The three-day event from Oct. 21 to Oct. 23 drew more than 5,000 people to Portland for cooking demonstrations, tastings, culinary tours, wine pairing lessons and eating out, according to the Greater Portland Convention and Visitors Bureau, which put on the event.
The Great Lost Bear, which participated in Restaurant Week in March of 2009 and 2010, did not join last week because October is usually its most bustling month, according to owner David Evans. And this October was its busiest ever, he adds, although he's not sure why.
Norine Kotts, the general manager of El Rayo Taqueria in Portland, says her restaurant joined Restaurant Week last winter but not this time around because the days leading up to the Mexican holiday, the Day of the Dead on Nov. 1, are always hectic. She also mentions that as a lower-priced restaurant, it has been difficult to come up with a three-course meal that would be a bargain for $20, $30 or $40, which is required of all participating restaurants.
Despite this decision, she says she supports the event and thinks that El Rayo will probably rejoin next March. "All of my friends in the restaurant business were right out straight last week," she says.
David Turin, owner and head chef of David's restaurants in Portland and South Portland, says last week boosted sales at his Portland restaurant by 20% and helped make the week the most crowded ever for his South Portland location, which has been open for four years.
"This is not a super busy time of year so what it did was made what would have been an average-to-slow week into one of our top weeks," he says.
He adds that though not every diner who came into the restaurant last week ordered his special three-course $30 menu, many of them likely dined out after being inspired by all the publicity surrounding Restaurant Week. "People perceive it as a real celebration of what the Maine restaurant scene has to offer," Turin says. "The only drawback is I think that sometimes the time leading up and immediately following is kind of slow."
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