Diners across India waited for and then celebrated the Great Indian Restaurant Festival (GIRF) in 2018 for an entire month from 1st to 28th February. India’s largest annual restaurant festival, GIRF 2018 saw 1 Million Indians eating out at the top restaurants in their city without burning a hole in their pockets.
This year, the number of restaurants that offered diners a flat 50% off on food, alcohol or buffet, were 2,182, giving diners multiple options. A diner chose from top restaurants like Social, SodaBottleOpenerWala, Tamasha, FLYP@MTV, Yauatcha among many others. The festival gave diners access to the best of 5 star dining in their city, from The Ritz-Carlton in Bangalore to Westin in Gurgaon, from Hyatt Regency in Kolkata to Taj Deccan in Hyderabad and many others.
Thanks to Dineout, February has now been branded as the official month for Foodies. With two years of the Great Indian Restaurant Festival, foodies across India’s top 8 cities have started associating February as the month of experimenting with new cuisines and restaurants. A large number of diners tagged Dineout at the many office parties, birthdays as well as family reunions that were planned at festival restaurants in the month.
Ankit Mehrotra, Co Founder & Business Head of Dineout added, ‘We received an overwhelming response to the second edition of the Great Indian Restaurant Festival 2018. There was an extremely high percentage of diners who went out multiple times during the festival which truly is the best way to fully utilize the amazing offers available to a diner during February. Dineout consumers saved a whopping 45 Cr in discounts on restaurant bills.’
This festival is proving to be a unique and beneficial initiative for India’s F&B industry. When asked Ayush Madan, CEO at The Barbeque Company said, ‘Last year, our association with the Great Indian Restaurant Festival was hugely successful and it has been so this year as well. Infact, GIRF has always helped us bring in more clientele and generate more leads for us. The festival also plays a huge role in marketing our outlet and we are sure that it’ll indeed help us in the long run.’ The Barbeque Company in New Delhi was one of the fastest selling outlets during the festival. Dineout drove more than 125 Cr INR worth of business for the participating restaurants.
During GIRF 2018, diners were engaged on social media via a daily contest that made 28 lucky diners eat their way to owning a OnePlus 5T. Each day of February, saw one lucky winner who shared his/her dining images on Instagram & Facebook, win the much-coveted OnePlus 5T. This was a much talked about social contest and saw thousands of foodporn posts giving visibility to the participating restaurants. Apart from trending multiple times on Twitter, GIRF 2018 was the most talked about festival in February in the food blogging circles.
The festival was presented by Airtel Payments Bank, with NRAI as the industry partner, William Lawson’s CDs as the drinks partner and Pepsi as the food partner; all of whom played a huge role in the festival’s success.
Until next year’s Great Indian Restaurant Festival, Dineout continues to offer great discounts to diners who make table reservations through them at the top restaurants in the city.