Columbus sees "Restaurant Week" bump in diners

The twice-yearly 614 Restaurant Week succeeded in enticing Columbus eaters to dine out in numbers not often seen since pre-pandemic times.

Driving the news: Restaurant reservation service OpenTable features a "State of the Industry" chart to compare how many daily reservations are made compared to that date in 2019 on the OpenTable network.

• Following a massive drop-off in 2020, Columbus restaurants saw a climb in reservations throughout 2021 until the Omicron variant hit.

The latest: After a slow first day of Restaurant Week (Jan. 24-29), Columbus recorded comparable numbers to 2019 on OpenTable.

• Thursday, Jan. 27 actually had 11% more reservations than on that date three years earlier — which fell on a weekend.

State of play: Public health mandates are no longer keeping residents home like in 2020.

• While Columbus and some other suburbs still have mask mandates in public, the city has not gone as far as places like Chicago that require proof of vaccination to eat out.

Zoom out: Across Ohio, restaurants have consistently recorded much less reservations in January 2022 compared to this month in 2019.

• Besides the pandemic, bad weather in the north is likely to blame.

The takeaway: More time is needed for dining to fully recover, but special events like Restaurant Week can provide an important boost to local businesses.

• Both of us at Axios Columbus were happy to oblige.
• Keep an eye out for Pizza and Beer Week in the spring, the second Restaurant Week this summer and Burger Week in the fall.