Spring Binghamton Restaurant Week packed in the crowds

BINGHAMTON — More than 13,000 diners turned out for Binghamton’s fifth Restaurant Week this past March, helping restaurants show off their cuisine and hopefully win some new loyal customers.

During the week, which ran from March 20-29, a total of 17 restaurants offered diners a lunch menu for $10 and dinner menu for $20.

This spring’s event generated the sale of more than 13,550 meals, up 38 percent from last spring’s event and 45 percent over last fall’s restaurant week. 

Burger Mondays Bar & Grille, located at 23 Henry St., participated in Restaurant Week for the second time and co-owner Robert Hutchings says business was booming during the event.

The restaurant nearly tripled the amount of meals it sold from when it participated in the fall event, he says. Burger Mondays sold about 400 dinners off the special Restaurant Week dinner menu, which offered a choice of soup or salad, an entrée, and a dessert. The downtown Binghamton eatery also drew another 800 diners during Restaurant Week that decided to order off the regular menu, Hutchings says.

“It made the place packed day and night,” he says of the promotional event. Burger Mondays, which as its name implies specializes in burgers, even attracted increased traffic during the lunch hour, even though it only participated in the dinner portion of the event. Restaurants had the option to participate for lunch, dinner, or both.

The event just created a vibe of “busyness” downtown, Hutchings says. He attributes it to people wanting to get away from the chain restaurants and check out some new options. Restaurant Week gives people the option to do that, often with restaurants that are within walking distance from each other.

“It’s getting a lot of people in who wouldn’t normally go out to eat,” Hutchings says of the event.

Christopher Taylor, general manager of Nezuntoz Cafe, concurs that Restaurant Week is great for getting customers in the door, and the café, located at 50 Pennsylvania Ave., sold about 275 lunches during the event. That’s about 25 more meals than it sold during the last week.

“It gives us the opportunity to put together something where [diners] can sample a little bit of anything,” he says of the café’s menu for the event. It was a great opportunity for the café to showcase its food, he notes.

Taylor says the weather, with sunny skies and temperatures well above normal, helped bring people out during the week as well.

All of those diners benefited more than just the restaurants they visited during the week. With a portion of each meal sold going to charity, the event also raised more than $5,600 for The Boys and Girls Clubs of Binghamton.

The next Binghamton Restaurant Week (www.binghamtonrestaurantweek.com) is scheduled for Sept. 18-27. The event is organized by Marie McKenna of Lost Dog Café and Piero Lisio of Little Venice Restaurant in association with the Binghamton Economic Development Office and BingSpot, which is a lifestyle guide promoting downtown Binghamton.

Event organizers promoted Restaurant Week through the website and via radio advertising.