Cheap East 2006, 20 years later

   

We started where's the beef way back in 2006 when we moved down to Melbourne from Brisbane. That means, of course, that it's 20 years since we started exploring Melbourne veg dining options and posting low quality photos of delicious food. 

Our bible for the first few years was The Age's 2006 Cheap Eats Guide, a region-by-region guide to 473 cafes, bars and restaurants across Victoria that promised meals for less than $25 a head. We checked back in 2016, revisiting a bunch of old favourites and checking the stats. At that point, 282 (59.6%) of the places listed were still open, and getting blogged by us in 2006 or 2007 was associated with a very large benefit (around 80% of the places we had blogged stayed open compared with 56% of the unblogged places).

Another decade has passed, so it's time to update the figures! The decade since 2016 has been a tough one, with the number of places still open falling by about half - we're down to 144 out of the original 473 (30.4%). There are a range of factors that predict longevity, but the key finding: being blogged by where's the beef will boost your business' survival. 

   

Between arriving in Melbourne in late 2006 and the end of 2007, we visited and blogged 43 places from the Cheap Eats, and 21 (48.8%) are still trading two decades later, compared with just 28.6% of the places we didn't blog. Now that's influence. In a fully adjusted logistic regression model, getting a wtb review before 2007 was linked with a doubling of your odds of staying open for 20 years! Incredible stuff.

   

There's some interesting variation between venues. Pubs seem to have the most staying power. Vietnamese restaurants in particular have struggled through that second decade, with only one of the twenty places in the Cheap Eats still trading this year. 

   

This is echoed in the regional data - the Inner East (which has a strong Vietnamese history and community) experienced the most closures, but more than half of the listed places have closed in every region. It's a tough industry.

We're going to revisit a bunch of places from the early years of where's the beef this year and check in on how they've changed (or not) since the heady days of 2006. Stay tuned!