The Festival Theatre Café in numbers

August is always a busy month in Edinburgh and the Festival Theatre Café was bustling, both as a destination stop and for customers arriving and leaving to see shows at the Festival Theatre. Let’s take a look at it in numbers, while also revealing some interesting trends about the eating and drinking habits of Edinburgh festival-goers.

People in Edinburgh love a piece of cake. We sold a total of 1453 pieces of yummy, handmade cakes. That’s almost 47 pieces of cake a day!

Despite the warm August, soup was a popular lunch option with 400 bowls of soup sold (that’s a 59% increase compared to last year). Thanks to the Edinburgh-based company Union of Genius for providing us with daily delicious soups.

We sold 5 bathtubs worth of wine (we’ll leave this figure there…).

A total of 676 sandwiches were served, making sandwiches the most popular lunch option at the Café. Our sandwiches are freshly made every morning and the delicious rolls are brought in from the local artisan bakery Manna House Bakery.

The eternal coffee vs. tea battle ends here. People ordered 1776 pots of tea compared to 3981 coffees, with Americanos being the favourite option with a whopping 1336 cups sold.

What a gin-tastic month we had, with gin being the most consumed spirit at the Café.

Interestingly we sold 17% fewer bottles of water, but filled more refillable bottles than ever before.

Whether you are looking for a healthy lunch or a guilty pleasure; a quick fizzy drink or a long relaxing cuppa; a place to enjoy the sunshine or watch the rain fall, the Festival Theatre Café is the place to be. The Café is open Monday to Saturday from 10am until the show starts. The bar will remain open until after the interval. On nights with no show in the theatre, the Café will close at 5pm (with last food orders at 4pm).

The above figures relate to a 24-day period during August 2018.