2019 marks 10 years of TheFork, a leading online restaurant reservation platform, in Australia. For the past 10 years The Fork, formerly known as Dimmi, has been helping to make restaurant reservations simpler for both diners and restaurants.
Since 2009, TheFork has provided support to restaurants across Australia, leading to an increase in reservations and exposure for many restaurants. There are currently 4,500 restaurants using the platform.
Over the 10 years, TheFork has also seen a huge amount of change across the restaurant industry including how often and when diners frequent restaurants, the kinds of restaurants diners are searching for and booking and the introduction of, and fading out of trends into the Australian dining scene.
Key changes across TheFork in the past 10 years include:
● In NSW, the number of plant based restaurants listed on TheFork increased by 80% from 2017 to 2018.
● Since 2009 the number of plant based restaurants on TheFork has jumped over 3000% with 27,502 plant-based restaurants now listed on TheFork in Australia.
● Food is definitely the way to the heart in Australia with 2694 proposals made at restaurants booked on TheFork since 2009.
● Between 2012 and 2019, there has been a 546% increase in NSW diners reporting allergies when using TheFork to make a reservation.
● In 2018, there was a 373% increase in people dining at 9pm rather than 7pm.
● Between 2017 and 2018 there was a 9% increase in solo diners booking on TheFork and an increase of 17% of walk in solo diners.
● Modern Australian has consistently remained the most booked cuisine across TheFork over the past 10 years. Cambodian cuisine saw an increase of 529% in bookings in 2017, and Greek cuisine increased an average of 30% between 2014-2018 across Australia. Among the most rare categories are Albanian, Finnish, Maltese and Romanian each with less than five restaurants listed across TheFork in Australia.
● When booking a restaurant, the most common time to make a reservation on TheFork is 3pm – 5pm, however until 2014 TheFork saw the most bookings made between 10am – 11am.
● 2017 was Australia’s rudest year with 1.56% of diners booking on TheFork not showing up to their reservation. Reminders via TheFork have helped to keep this number low over the 10 years.
● Our average spend as diners in Australia has been consistent with only 4% movement between 2010 and now.
● Australia has changed the way they book their restaurants, with huge growth in mobile users. In 2019, mobile devices accounted for over 69% of TheFork’s traffic, while in 2012 only 17% of all traffic was from mobile devices.
Key changes across TheFork in the past 10 years include:
● 2009 – Steven Premutico starts Dimmi, enabling Aussies to discover and book restaurants instantly, changing the Australian restaurant booking landscape for good.
● 2015 – Dimmi is acquired by TripAdvisor as part of TheFork Group, to add restaurant reservations to its portfolio.
● 2015 – Dimmi launches its first mobile app.
● 2016 – Dimmi payments launches giving restaurants new payment solutions to confirm bookings and provide protection against no-shows.
● 2019 – Dimmi rebrands to TheFork, launches INSIDER, TheFork Festival and celebrates 10 years of online restaurant reservations in Australia.
