Le Gavroche

It might not have been the biggest news story of the day, but Friday saw something pretty big in the food world – the announcement of the closure, after nearly 56 years, of Le Gavroche. The restaurant is arguably the most important and certainly one of the most influential in Britain and reactions to the news were widespread and very vocal. I remember my own visits with enormous pleasure – as did so many other commentators.

What interested me beyond the news itself was the timing of it… Le Gavroche put out the news via its PR agency Red Kite in a release at 5pm on a Friday afternoon, just when most features and lifestyle writers and editors are winding down for the weekend and most news outlets are in the final stages of putting together at least their first editions for Saturday.

I was curious, so I asked Kate Garnett, Red Kite’s associate director. As I suspected, it wasn’t about trying to drum up press interest – goodness knows there was enough of that – but largely to make sure that staff, customers and business partners all knew before the rest of the world and that they had the weekend to deal with the inevitable deluge of requests.

That feels right for something so ‘end of an era’ but I wouldn’t want anyone to get the idea that Friday afternoon is the way to guarantee fast-turnaround headlines – most of the time it’d only guarantee being forgotten about or overtaken by weekend events, so please take heed.