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Six months after closing its doors, famed London restaurant Le Gavroche is set to return next week — but only for well-heeled tennis fans.
Head chef Michel Roux Jr will be running the kitchen as Le Gavroche briefly rises from the ashes for the next fortnight inside The Lawn, one of the exclusive hospitality venues at the Wimbledon Championships.
Patrons will be treated to vintage champagne, a tasting “menu exceptionnel”, and the restaurant’s famous cheese trolley, while artwork and memorabilia from the original Mayfair eatery will be brought in to help recreate its atmosphere.
Le Gavroche’s fleeting revival is part of Wimbledon’s push to tap rising demand across the world of sport for premium experiences aimed at wealthy individuals. While many corporate clients are cutting back on expensive entertaining, retail demand for high-end hospitality has boomed in the aftermath of the pandemic as more people opt to spend big on memorable moments.
Sara Hunter, head of partnerships and hospitality at the All England Lawn Tennis Club, said there had been a clear shift away from the “traditional corporate networking packages” towards bookings by small groups of friends and families.
A single day at Le Gavroche with a ticket for Centre Court starts at £2,765 a head after tax, while entrance on the final day of the championships — including a seat for the men’s final — will set tennis-loving gourmands back at least £6,400. All Wimbledon’s premium hospitality sold out in March, a month earlier than last year.
Wimbledon has always offered an exclusive version of a day watching tennis. Those willing to pay for hospitality access already had the option of dining in Marcus Wareing’s Rosewater Pavilion and being pampered by Charlotte Tilbury make-up artists inside The Treehouse.
But with Le Gavroche, Wimbledon’s move to add a new layer of luxury echoes steps taken elsewhere in sport and live entertainment, as stadium and racetrack owners beef up their high-end offerings.
Michelin-starred chefs ply their trade in luxury lounges at football, rugby and cricket matches across the country, while entrance to the Paddock Club at Formula One’s British Grand Prix in July costs almost £5,000.
Keith Prowse, which runs hospitality at Wimbledon and several other sporting events across the UK, said its database of individual customers had almost doubled post-pandemic.
Even the Olympics is looking to ride the wave after outsourcing its hospitality to a single provider for the next three editions of the games. Premium tickets for the final of the men’s basketball in Paris this summer carry a price tag of €6,500 per person.
Matt Leek at sports consultancy Two Circles said that hospitality was “no longer the domain of corporates”, and that event organisers were increasingly aiming their marketing at the “affluent fan”.
“There is a broader trend here linked to the growth in the experiential economy post-Covid,” he said, adding that this had been especially notable in the “ultra premium” segment.
The AELTC hopes to better the £380mn revenue from last year’s Wimbledon Championships, which resulted in an operating profit of £53mn. Ninety per cent of the surplus generated from the tournament goes to the Lawn Tennis Association to fund the sport across the country.
Rising income has also enabled the AELTC to increase prize money this year by 12 per cent to £50mn, in line with recent changes at other Grand Slams.
Opened in 1967 by brothers Albert and Michel Roux, Le Gavroche was the first restaurant in the UK to receive a Michelin star and helped transform London’s dining scene. A number of renowned chefs passed through the kitchen on their way to future stardom, including Gordon Ramsay and Marco Pierre White.
Roux Jr, who took over running Le Gavroche from his father in 1991, closed the doors permanently in January after 57 years of service, saying he wanted to “spend more time with my family”.
The Roux family has had a tie-up with Wimbledon for more than a decade, and hosted Le Gavroche pop-ups on two Cunard cruise liners earlier this year. Roux Jr returned to London’s restaurant scene in May with Chez Roux at The Langham hotel.