York Theatre Royal

York Theatre Royal has been producing great drama in the beautiful City of York for over 250 years and is one of the country’s leading producing theatres. Each year it welcomes over 200,000 people to a wide variety of performance and participatory events.

York Theatre Royal was awarded £2.85 million by Arts Council England to undertake a major redevelopment of the theatre. Coupled with grants from City of York Council and other trusts and foundations, the theatre development cost was in the region of £4.1 million. The redeveloped theatre, which reopened in Spring 2016, has increased the intimacy and flexibility of the main theatre space as well as provided an improved welcome to the theatre by a radical redesign of the front of house areas, including a complete redevelopment of the existing café and bars provision.

The gothic colonnade has been enclosed in glass, creating a warm and inviting entrance. New seating areas have been incorporated into the layout with a new café and bistro offering freshly made deli snacks and main meals with ingredients from the best local Yorkshire suppliers.

Our approach has included creating a sense of place with ‘chameleon’ café bar areas that are flexible and inclusive, as well as integrated with other front of house services, including reception/ box office. Through our advice of ensuring that the new and revised food and beverage operations are customer centric we have also supported in making this essential income stream much more commercially sustainable.

Advice & support has included:

• Development of Catering & Bars Strategy
• Client objectives & site dynamics determined
• Local, national research & competition review
• Benchmarking – demand, financials, best practice & market trends
• Demand & financial models developed
• Optimum location for catering and bars determined
• Catering strategy & concept development
• Management options & optimum operating structure

Conference & Events Potential

• National & York specific events & market requirements detailed
• Events business in York researched & detailed
• Key food & beverage considerations for future events determined
• Financial potential developed