Covid 19 Delta outbreak: Wellington on a Plate festival ends after unusual year

Visa Wellington on a Plate wrapped up on Sunday. Photo / Supplied

With the last burgers flipped and the final cocktails shaken, the capital's most celebrated culinary festival wrapped up last night after its most unusual year ever.

Normally running throughout the month of August, this year Visa Wellington on a Plate was forced to press pause midway through, after the announcement of level 4 lockdown on August 17.

Festival director Sarah Meikle said the first two weeks of the festival – prior to lockdown – had been "everything we expected and more".

"Having a Covid lockdown hit right in the middle was somewhat of a blow, particularly because it really started at the peak of the activity, when Garage Project presents Burger Wellington was due to start," she said.

"That's when we get huge numbers of foot traffic through restaurant, so definitely that has had an impact."

A high engagement from Auckland audiences online has also shown the loss of potential visitors who have not made it to Wellington this year because of lockdown.

Meikle said around 20 per cent of their online traffic throughout this year's festival had come from Aucklanders dreaming of Wellington feasts.

"Our Auckland traffic is always our second highest group of visitors to our website," she said.

Wellington on a Plate was paused on August 17 due to lockdown. Photo / Supplied

"During lockdown itself it went down to about 11 per cent, but then it shot right back to 20 per cent once we came out of lockdown, with them anticipating that they would soon follow."

It was hard to measure how much loss there had been due to Aucklanders being unable to travel, she said.

"About 30 per cent of the total spend across the festival period is out of town. This year we'd be right to anticipate it would be down, for obvious reasons."

Around 10 per cent of the 16,000 visitors to beer festival Beervana – which took place the weekend before lockdown – had been from Auckland, she said.

In spite of lockdown's interruption, the festival had been able adapt to alert level settings and re-launched its takeaway inventory service At Yours in level 3.

Harnessing the energy of the beloved Burger Wellington challenge, it also spawned an online competition that challenged home chefs to create their own burgers in lockdown.

Normally 30 per cent of visitors to the festival are from out of town. Photo / Supplied

Burger WellingtIN saw more than 400 entries from around Wellington and further afield, with three finalists competing in a cook-off last week.

"During lockdown people need projects and we gave them one," Meikle said.

"And we had entries not just from Wellington but from much further afield – all around the country ... and we even had some from Sydney entering."

Kāpiti Coast Primary School teacher Catherine Clare was awarded the prize last week, for her "Loosen up my Buckle" Burger.

A drop to level 2 on September 8 brought a return for Wellington on A Plate, with restaurants able to serve their burgers for an extra two weeks.

The "Loosen up my Buckle" burger was the winner of the Burger Wellington challenge which took place during lockdown. Photo / Wellington on a Plate

"It hopefully meant that if the number of patrons they could serve in their restaurant were down because of level 2 restrictions, they were still able to actually serve what they had anticipated through the festival," Meikle said.

It was too early to tell the impact of the Covid outbreak on the festival, but Meikle described Wellington on a Plate 2021 as "down but not out".

"We won't be using this as a benchmark year ... but we certainly made the most of what was a pretty tricky situation."

Results of the Burger Wellington and Cocktail Wellington challenges will likely be available within the next month.