Soho institution Bob Bob Ricard slashes the cost of midweek meals

Expect airline-style fares in the Soho restaurant
Chic eats: The glamorous Soho restaurant to lower its midweek prices
Paul Winch-Furness

One of the West End’s most glamorous restaurants is adopting airline-style off-peak pricing in a bid to fill up its dining room at lunchtime and for early-week dinner sittings.

Soho’s Bob Bob Ricard — best known for the “Press for champagne” buttons at every table — will cut prices on its à la carte menu by around 25 per cent at lunch from Monday to Thursday, and for Monday dinner. Prices will be about 15 per cent lower than normal for “mid-peak” bookings: lunch on Friday to Sunday, and dinner on Tuesday and Sunday.

The reductions, at a restaurant that has served Prince Harry and celebrities such as Kylie Minogue and Tamara Ecclestone, mean that a Chateaubriand steak with truffle gravy priced at £39.50 on a Saturday night will appear at £29.50 on the Monday night menu.

Similarly, poached sole with lobster champagne sauce that costs £28.50 at the busiest sittings will have an off-peak price of £22.50, and a 20g serving of white sturgeon caviar will come down from £29 to £21.

Owner Leonid Shutov said London restaurants had been wrestling for decades with the problem of how to persuade customers to eat more often outside the prime weekend dinner slots. He said: “For restaurants to pretend they are outside the laws of supply and demand and basic economics is silly.

“Many industries have long embraced off-peak pricing and managed to achieve consistent occupancy, but for restaurants occupancy jumps around massively.

“On a Saturday they might have 800 covers, then at lunch on Monday they can barely scrape together 40. So they have all the costs but very little income.

“But if people are offered exactly the same experience that is not compromised in any way but at a much lower price then that becomes hard for them to ignore.”

Mr Shutov said the bargain “prix fixe” set menus offered by many restaurants at lunchtime were “not our cup of tea because if people are coming in for the full opulent restaurant experience with caviar and Beef Wellington and all the bells and whistles they don’t want some little snack.”

He said research showed the average spend at lunch was similar to dinner, suggesting that those who visit the restaurant in the middle of the day do not want to compromise their experience.The reduced prices come into effect from today, but do not apply to the wine list.

The same menu system will apply at Mr Shutov’s new venture, Bob Bob Cité in “the Cheesegrater”, when it opens in the spring with two-Michelin-starred Eric Chavot as head chef.

Flexible pricing that responds to demand has long been used in the aviation, travel and hotel sectors but was brought to an unprecedented level of scientific precision by budget airlines such as easyJet and Ryanair, which at one stage was prepared to sell tickets for as little as 99p to fill planes.

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