Restaurant booking platform Bookatable.co.uk has released its Quarterly Dining Trends report based on twelve months of British booking and dining data. The research reveals the UK’s favourite restaurants and favourite cuisines, investigates booking patterns in terms of platform use, and reveals a growing demand for veggie and vegan eating amongst UK diners.
Most popular restaurants
Looking at Britain’s most popular restaurants in 2014 from Bookatable’s database of 2.6 million diners, London, Birmingham and Manchester continue to be the UK’s most in-demand gastro spots. Four of the ten most popular restaurants in the UK are based in London, three in Birmingham and one in Manchester.
Once again taking the top spot as the UK’s most popular restaurant is London’s OXO Tower Brasserie, accounting for almost 45,000 bookings in 2014 alone. Next up is Afternoon Tea at the Ritz with over 33,000 2014 bookings, and jumping into third from seventh place last year is the Alton Towers Restaurant with more than 33,000 bookings in 2014.
Britons also continued to show love for Jamie Oliver chain Jamie’s Italian, with two of the Italian restaurants (Birmingham and Newcastle) appearing in the UK top ten and accounting for 16% of top ten restaurant bookings. The continued popularity of London’s Rainforest Café, accounting for 10% of top ten restaurant bookings, demonstrates a consumer demand for fun, family-friendly dining.
The Bookatable top ten restaurants in the UK during 2014:
- OXO Tower Brasserie, London
- Afternoon Tea at The Ritz, London
- Alton Towers
- The Rainforest Café, London
- Cloud 23, Deansgate, Manchester
- Jamie’s Italian, Newcastle
- Covent Garden Fire & Stone, London
- Miller & Carter, Sutton Park Birmingham
- Jamie’s Italian, Birmingham
- Marco Pierre White Steakhouse, Birmingham
Most popular cuisine types
Looking to the most popular cuisine types, Italian food continues to take poll position as the most booked cuisine in the UK; perhaps in part due to the popularity of Jamie’s Italian. Italian food is closely followed by British food, Pizza and Steak – showing that, although Britons have a growing appetite for new types of food, we still enjoy our favourites.
The top ten most popular cuisines in the UK in 2014:
- Italian
- British
- Pizza
- Steaks and Grills
- French
- European
- International
- American
- Fish & Seafood
- Mexican
19% jump in Mobile Bookings
2014 was a year in which consumers turned to mobile technology for researching and booking leisure activities more than ever before, and this is reflected by a 19% jump in mobile bookings on the Bookatable platform from January 2014 to January 2015.
This uplift is an important shift in consumer behaviour and one which savvy restaurateurs will leverage to drive revenue in 2015 – implementing, or building on existing functionalities for mobile viewing of menus and booking tables.
Recognising this trend and responding in a way that drove footfall to restaurant partners, Bookatable partnered with AMEX to develop and deploy a set of iBeacons at last October’s London Restaurant Festival. All attendees at the festival with the Bookatable app downloaded were sent instant push notifications via Bluetooth when they passed within a 50 meter radius of participating restaurants, alerting them to special offers and tailored deals in a strategic attempt to encourage them to dine.
Burgeoning trend for vegetarian dining
Vegetarian and vegan dining are on the up in the UK and in London especially, with many previously carnivorous foodies opting for restaurants with a strong vegetarian offering or exclusively meat free menu. London seems to be the UK’s veggie dining hotspot, with more restaurants that cater to vegetarians than any other UK city.
This refreshed appetite for vegetarian dining is reflected in Bookatable insight gathered using 2014 booking data. The data shows a marked increase in bookings to restaurants catering for vegetarians during 2014, with bookings for establishments catering to vegetarian palettes rising by 19% between April and December of 2014, clearly demonstrating an increase in demand for this type of food and a burgeoning trend for vegetarian dining in the UK.
This news comes ahead of Meat Free Week taking place in the UK from 23rd March to 29th March, and in the know foodies claiming that veggie cuisine will be one of THE foods of 2015 – making this an exciting prospect for vegetarians, vegans and the restaurants catering to them.
David Moore from Pied à Terre said: “Catering to both vegetarians and meat eaters at Michelin star level, we’ve been able to witness a real uplift in the amount of diners opting for veggie options over the last year. Now is a perfect time to make vegetarian menus as creative as possible and entice more diners, as vegetarian dining is set to become even more popular in 2015.”
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