Talking points

• Foot traffic figures from the City of Melbourne show pedestrian activity near the Town Hall on Thursday last week was up 15 per cent on the previous week but only 13 per cent on Friday.
• Mobile ordering and payments platform Mr Yum data shows CBD lunchtime average order values were up 14 per cent on Wednesdays compared to 2021 but only 6 per cent on Fridays.
• The Melbourne Food & Wine Festival runs from March 25 to April 8.

The rise of working from home on Fridays is threatening the city’s bustling food scene, as workers fuel themselves with fridge leftovers rather than the traditional end-of-week long lunch.

Foot traffic figures from the City of Melbourne show pedestrian activity near the Town Hall on Thursday last week was up 15 per cent on the previous week compared to Friday when it was up 13 per cent.

Bar Margaux owner Michael Madrusan would love to see the long lunch return. Credit:Luis Ascui

In a bid to revive the Friday long lunch trade, several city restaurants have signed up to a “High Steaks” event for the Melbourne Food & Wine Festival.

Bar Margaux owner Michael Madrusan wants to bring back boozy long lunches on Fridays, complete with gin martinis and prime steaks.

“Should it come back? Absolutely,” he says. “Can we do it? Why not?”

Madrusan says the long lunch is good for workplaces as well as restaurants and bars.

“I think it’ll bring a lot more to the way people see their jobs as well if they can incorporate something social within their work,” he says. “I think at a time like this when people are probably a little apprehensive to come back into the office for various reasons, I think it’s great to have ideas and incentives or a little romance.”

Opening for the High Steaks lunches will be a test for Bar Margaux, which has been closed in the daytime due to a lack of demand and staff shortages.

Bar Lourinha in the CBD has been open but chef Matt McConnell says diners are more likely to have a long lunch on a Thursday than a Friday.

“Some offices don’t go in on Fridays at all,” he says. “We are seeing the midweek thing creeping back, but it’s at the loss of what used to be a really, really solid Friday trade for us.”

The trend to midweek lunches rather than Friday is reflected in data from mobile ordering and payments platform Mr Yum, which found CBD lunchtime average order values on the platform were up 14 per cent on Wednesdays compared to 2021 but only 6 per cent on Fridays.

The Roaring ’20s came at the end of the Spanish flu pandemic and McConnell says he’d love to see a similar resurgence in Melbourne.

“We obviously want to be as optimistic as we can and just say that with as big a bust as it has been, this whole COVID thing, we want it to be outweighed by the boom that you get at the other end,” he says. “So we’re all for people going out having a big lunch, having a great time and bringing that daytime foot traffic in the city back to life.”

Participating restaurants in the High Steaks event include Bar Margaux, Bar Lourinha, Chancery Lane Bistro, Epocha, Grill Americano, Kisume, La Luna Bistro, Lillian Terrace, Prince Dining Room, Rockpool Bar & Grill, Society and Victor Churchill.

The Melbourne Food & Wine Festival runs from March 25 to April 8.

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