So you thought Fridays were good? They’re about to get a whole lot better. London Mayor Sadiq Khan and Transport for London have teamed up with booking platform OpenTable to offer a range of discounts at reputable restaurants until the end of May as part of an initiative to encourage more Londoners to use TfL services and travel into the city on Fridays to boost the economy.
The trial scheme, titled ‘Let’s Do Fridays’, and paired with the new off-peak TfL offering, is a reaction to a recent survey by OpenTable which revealed that bookings made by Londoners on Fridays are down 20% on pre-pandemic levels, thought to be because a large number of people now choose to work from home on the last day of the working week.
The discounts, available at 35 London restaurants and counting, include ‘VAT Free Fridays’ at Gaucho – where diners who visit any of the twelve London venues on a Friday during March will receive a twenty percent discount when ordering from the a la carte menu between 12PM and 4PM – and ‘Off-peak Fridays’ at Bill’s, offering a two-course meal with a drink for £17.50 at all of the eatery’s London locations. Meanwhile, at Hawksmoor it’s £5 corkage from lunch until 5pm, and at Benares you can enjoy a three-course lunch and a cocktail for £39 per person.
In a statement shared with The Standard, Khan said: “I’m thrilled to have OpenTable on board as the latest headline partner for our ground-breaking trial of Off-peak Fridays.
“It’s clear that many people are still not coming into the office on Fridays compared to before the pandemic, which is having a major knock-on effect on our shops, restaurants, pubs and cultural venues.
“These weekly offers from OpenTable, combined with Off-Peak Fridays, will help to encourage Londoners back into the city on Fridays to make the most of London’s world-leading restaurants, as we continue building a better, more prosperous London for everyone.”
