Can Center City restaurants save their summer lunch business?

“Monday and Fridays, there’s nothing happening at lunch,” said Dhayanandh “Danny” Kuselan, a partner in Thanal, an Indian restaurant, and Topside Tavern, a sports bar, both near Logan Square. “And then Tuesday, Wednesday, sometimes it gets busy, sometimes not.”

It’s no secret that since the pandemic emptied the office buildings, lunch business in Center City has slumped. The summer vacation season only adds another layer of frustration for restaurateurs.

Last month, the Center City District started a pilot program called Let’s Do Lunch that offers discounted meals in an effort to stimulate lunchtime activity in the area. The deal, available at participating restaurants on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays, includes a pair of individual entrées, plus a shared appetizer or dessert, for $30.

Restaurants that were a part of Center City District Restaurant Week — which featured more than 100 establishments in January — told the district that summer business was just as slow as the period after New Year’s, said Giavana Suraci Pruiti, the district’s senior manager for retail marketing and events. So “we wanted to do something that encouraged people that are back to actually get out of their office at lunchtime,” Pruiti said.

Inspired by the popular Wednesday night Center City District Sips happy-hour promotion, Let’s Do Lunch was designed as a lighter, more targeted initiative. It spans 25 restaurants and runs through Aug. 14.

Participating restaurants paid a $200 buy-in to cover marketing expenses, such as a 20,000-piece postcard campaign distributed across office buildings and by street teams.

A recent report by the district said that nonresident workers who live within two miles of Center City are back in the office at rates approaching 90% of 2019 levels. On an average day, there are about 377,000 pedestrians, including residents and nonresident workers.

The people may have returned, but apparently their spending habits have not: The owners of some sit-down Center City restaurants whose lunch check average is about $20 feel that they are competing with Wawa and fast-casual restaurants nowadays.

“There’s a whole lot of people that just go spend $18 on a Sweetgreen salad and go back to work,” said Dave Magrogan, whose restaurant holdings include Barra Rossa, a casual Italian restaurant at 10th and Walnut Streets. He said his lunch traffic overall is down 25% from 2019, and that during the summer, Barra Rossa’s lunch volume is cut in half.

Barra Rossa’s core lunch customer base is the Thomas Jefferson University Hospital community and theatergoers. After two weeks of offering the Let’s Do Lunch menu — with a frittata, chicken Parmesan, or eggplant Parmesan as entrée options — Magrogan said he was not too sure it was helping. “We try to participate in anything that they’re putting together because it gives exposure to the city, but we haven’t seen anything substantial from it,” he said.

Kuselan said he was having a similar experience at Thanal and Topside Tavern. “You never know when you’re going to be busy,” he said.

Higher-end Center City restaurants seem to be faring better. Sam Mink — owner of Oyster House near Rittenhouse Square, which is not participating in Let’s Do Lunch — said business overall was solid, though he’s no longer open Mondays, and Fridays are extremely slow.

Oyster House responded to a drop in customer lunch traffic by focusing on its strength: offering a higher-end experience with an average check of $55 per person. Unlike pre-COVID, when lunch items were priced lower than dinner — even for the same dish — the restaurant has now adopted uniform pricing across lunch and dinner menus.

“We’re not going to compete with the $15 lunch that you can get at Qdoba or Sweetgreen, or even a $20 lunch,” Mink said. “Pre-COVID, we kept our lunch prices very low — too low, in my mind. We had a dinner menu with the same piece of fish, but we charged more for it because we thought it had that [dinner] value.”

Oyster House’s check average at lunch is still lower than dinner, because the lunch menu includes some lower-ticket items, such as the shrimp salad roll and salads.

Also doubling down on lunch is Dizengoff, Michael Solomonov and Steve Cook’s hummusiya in Rittenhouse, which also is not participating in the Let’s Do Lunch promotion. Last month, CookNSolo streamlined the restaurant’s business model by instituting one menu, served from lunch through dinner. The doors are also staying open during what was a gap period — and there’s now a happy hour from 2 to 6 p.m.

Though it’s been only about two weeks, “the expanded menu at lunch has been a nice draw,” Cook said.