For restaurants, Monday is traditionally the quietest day of the week. In the past, restaurateurs have tried to combat this, but with little real success. Some, for example, have offered free corkage, converting their places into bring-your-own-bottle establishments for the evening — a tactic that may increase the number of diners but at a price, as profitable wine sales plummet.
As a restaurateur, I used to schedule the openings of artists’ exhibitions for Monday nights, since, invariably, they would attract a decent audience who would drink and often stay for supper. Yet this tactic often meant that a busy Monday would be followed by a quieter-than-average Tuesday.
The situation looks unlikely to improve in the current circumstances. “On Mondays in July 2019, sales were approximately 10 per cent of the weekly turnover,” says Hussein Ahmad, an accountant with Viewpoint Partners, which specialises in restaurant accounts. “This year it was down to 5 per cent.”
A few years ago, Michel Roux Jr reopened Mayfair’s smart Le Gavroche after a major redesign. And he decided not to open his doors fully on Mondays. His intention was twofold. First, to allow a fixed day of the week for private lunches and dinners, and, second, to avoid the cost of engaging his extensive team on a day when the restaurant would not be full.
When I spoke to Roux recently about this decision, he said: “There just does not appear to be enough customers out there on a Monday and those that are do not want — after perhaps a slightly indulgent Sunday — to drink that much wine in a restaurant. We had the opportunity to close and I have no regrets.”
In the age of Covid, an increasing number of restaurateurs appear to be following suit. In the numerous press releases I’ve received announcing the reopening of restaurants since lockdown, I have noticed that many will remain closed on the first day of the week. Jeremy King, for example, has reopened Bellanger in Islington but only Tuesday to Sunday. Likewise, our son, Will Lander, has decided not to reopen any of his three restaurants on Mondays. This, I suspect, is a trend that is likely to persist for some time.
Will Beckett, half of the team leading the Hawksmoor group, whose restaurants are in the process of reopening, confirmed that Mondays were their quietest day of the week, with the exception of Hawksmoor Guildhall in the City of London, which was busy on Mondays but whose surroundings were so quiet on Saturdays and Sundays that it simply wasn’t worth opening at the weekend.
Restaurateurs used to feel that it was important to open on Mondays for two very different reasons. First, if they could make even a tiny gross profit, then it was deemed worth doing.
Second, if a restaurant was closed for a certain day, or even just a part of it — such as Monday lunch — that would be a signal to the competition and to the public that it wasn’t doing well. After all, busy restaurants tend to self‑perpetuate, while restaurants that appear unsuccessful seem only to get quieter.
Yet these days, even the smallest restaurants need a general manager, waiters, several cooks and kitchen porters in order to function. Wages have risen and costs need to be covered. There seems to be a growing feeling that being closed on Mondays is not quite the negative signal it was once perceived to be.
There is also a positive advantage to being closed on Mondays: it gives the whole restaurant team a chance to draw breath and to have a collective day off after the busy period of Thursday to Sunday, which is important for wellbeing.
Thursdays have become the busiest night of the week for many, followed by the slightly less busy Fridays and Saturdays. (Incidentally, Saturdays are often the most difficult for restaurateurs to manage because many customers travel from far and wide, which means there tend to be more “no-shows” than usual.)
Besides, more restaurants are now open for Sunday lunch, aiming to attract families rather than the smaller tables that used to be the norm on Mondays.
There seems to be a growing — and quite understandable — disinclination to open on Mondays at all. Yet perhaps the handful that do will reap the reward.
More articles from Nicholas at ft.com/lander
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