The Battle with National Restaurant Chains on the High Street Continues

This week saw the closing down of a Harrogate eatery institution when the Damn Yankee shut it’s doors for the final time after a 40 year run in the town.  Independent restaurants are finding it more and more difficult to survive in an increasingly competitive market place.  With costs rising and the fierce competition from National restaurant chains we’re seeing Independently owned restaurants struggling to justify staying open.

Bed, Wild and Van Zellers are recent examples where we’ve seen Harrogate Independent restaurants closing principally due to increased competition from new National restaurants and rising costs to continue trading within the town.  Big chains such as Jamie Olivers Italian Restaurant and the recently opened Gino D’Acampo restaurant are operating with big financial backing and can afford to ride out the harder times.

There has to be a saturation point in all towns and cities with the number of restaurants operating.  There’s only a finite number of diners within every catchment area and if we don’t support our Independent and small local restaurant chains then every town and city will eventually end up with the same generically branded eateries.  In Yorkshire we love places with character, good food, good service and a friendly welcome, which makes it even more painful when these are the places which we see closing down.

At the end of the day it will be the public voting with their feet which will determine the survival of both large and small restaurants.  However will the continuing closure of these smaller outlets put entrepreneurs and financial backers off taking the risk of opening up new, unique, locally based eateries in the future?