Auckland Restaurant Month Delivers Results

This years 2012 Auckland Restaurant Month in the BIG little City was bigger and better than year one with more restaurants participating and restaurant events for the first time, as a critical part of the mix. We’ve had a lot of great formal and informal feedback from many of the participating restaurants and that it indeed it brought some extra business and customers during the event.

We commissioned MarketView Limited to complete research to determine how consumer spending was impacted by the event (Marketview tracked customers that used BNZ credit cards to dine at the participating restaurants between 1-31 August, 2012 and compared this to all central city restaurants). The results were extremely positive – despite the huge impact of RWC on August 2011.

Results

• When compared with August 2011, spending at ARM participating venues in Aug 2012 increased by 14.1% , and

• Spending in restaurants across the total CBD increased by 5.2%

• Transactions volumes also rose by 6.7% vs Aug 2011 with participating restaurants

• The increase in customers came from both regular ‘restaurant goers’ and ‘non-regulars’

• Those ‘non- regulars’ increased their spending at ARM participants by 22.5% compared to 1.3% from regular ‘restaurant goers’

• Value of PR exposure $680,000 - double the exposure from last year.

We also had over 3,400 entries into our $10k dining prize.

This is set to be an annual event, and we look forward to seeing the event go from strength to strength next year!