About Long Island Restaurant Week

Long Island Restaurant Week is a tri-annual event designed to garner positive publicity and additional business for the region's restaurants. Since 2006, it has been an annual fall promotion until the first spring Long Island Restaurant Week was launched in April 2011 and then winter was added in January of 2016, due to popular customer and restaurateur demand.

Some of the finest food on the East Coast is available in this region less than one hour from New York City. At the heart of hospitality services on Long Island are hundreds of restaurants and thousands of men and women serving local and visiting diners. Long Island Restaurant Week boosts commerce in traditionally sluggish periods during the fall, between post-summer spending and pre-holiday saving, and in the spring, between warm weather getaways and summer barbecues. From Sunday to Sunday, each participating restaurant has the option to offer its own unique two-course lunch menu for $24, and/or three-course dinner menu for $29, $39 or $46 every day it is open, except Saturday when it is offered only until 7 p.m. The campaigns, which span across the region's 118-miles from Garden City to Montauk, boast nearly 250 participants each fall and more than 160 during the winter.

Inspiration for the first Long Island Restaurant Week in 2006 derived from the then five-year-old Hamptons Restaurant Week, and its precursor, New York Restaurant Week. The campaign is presented by Long Island Restaurant & Hospitality Group - the new business-to-consumer promotions division of WordHampton Public Relations, one of Long Island's top hospitality PR firms. Long Island Restaurant Week attained impressive numbers for its first year. Total restaurant revenue was estimated to be $2,848,200 with New York State taking in an estimated $150,753 in tax dollars. Many restaurants reported midweek numbers to be up over 40 to 100% and an increase in sales and reservations up to 200% due to the promotion. Several restaurateurs embrace the week by extending it beyond the eight days.

The award-winning Long Island Restaurant Week garnered the prestigious Big Apple Award in the Marketing Consumer Services, Travel and Tourism/Hospitality sector by the New York Chapter of the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) for excellence in research and situation analysis, planning, execution, results and evaluation; Fair Media Council's "Media Savvy" Folio Award for the best use of a social media campaign to achieve defined goals; Platinum MarCom Award that gives recognition to the creative talent and firms that collaborate on outstanding marketing and communication projects; an AVA Digital Gold Award for the promotion's digital marketing campaign; and SABRE Gold Award Certificate of Excellence by leading public relations industry analyst, The Holmes Group, for superior achievement in branding and reputation.