Caffé Concerto marks three decades with month-long anniversary celebration

Caffè Concerto, the Italian-inspired restaurant, café and patisserie brand at the heart of the Caffè Concerto Hospitality Group, is celebrating its 30th anniversary this October with a month-long programme of special menus, events and customer rewards.

The popular restaurant was first founded in London in 1996 with a restaurant on Regent Street. In 2025 it launched its first northern restaurant in Victoria Gate, Leeds.

Today, the wider Group brings together restaurants, cafés and hospitality employing around 1,500 people. It boasts 22 restaurants in the UK, an international presence in Paris, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Lebanon, and The Grand Concerto Hotel in London.

The anniversary programme has been created to thank Caffè Concerto’s loyal customers while celebrating the people, experiences and achievements that have shaped both the brand and the wider hospitality group over the past three decades.

Starting on October 22, activities will include 30 Iconic Dishes for 30 Years, special food, drink and cake creations, daily giveaways and live music at selected restaurants.

Caffè Concerto’s journey has been heavily influenced by director Stephano Borjak, who joined the business to create its Regent Street restaurant. He saw an opportunity to combine the elegance of a European coffee house and patisserie with the warmth and generosity of an Italian restaurant, all within surroundings that felt special yet welcoming to everyone.

Borjak said: “Regent Street gave us the opportunity to show what Caffè Concerto could become. The ambition was to create somewhere elegant but approachable, a restaurant that could be part of both an ordinary afternoon and a landmark celebration.

The brand’s ambitions grew alongside its reach, from Regent Street to Knightsbridge, Chelsea, the West End, Westfield shopping centres and Victoria Gate in Leeds. It then expanded internationally to the Louvre in Paris, Qatar, Jeddah and Riyadh, among other locations, laying the foundations for a wider hospitality group.

Borjak added: “A huge amount of determination sits behind what customers see today. All these years later, I am enormously proud that the original idea continues to evolve while retaining its character.”

Chief executive Maher Al Hajjar joined the business in 2001 and helped develop the brand from the ground up. Together, Borjak and Al Hajjar expanded the restaurant portfolio, established Caffè Concerto’s own production operation and built its presence in the UK and overseas. As the business evolved into the wider Caffè Concerto Hospitality Group, its focus broadened across restaurants, cafés and hotels. Today, Al Hajjar leads the Group’s operations and its plans for the next stage of growth.

The anniversary celebrations have been designed to reach customers across the restaurant estate rather than centre on a single event. The 30 Iconic Dishes collection has been selected following a review of Caffè Concerto’s original menus, customer favourites and dishes that represent different periods in the brand’s history.

Cakes and patisserie remain central to Caffè Concerto’s identity and provide a direct link to its earliest years. While recipes, presentation and finishing techniques have evolved over three decades, customers continue to visit for familiar occasions, from coffee and cake to Afternoon Tea and milestone celebrations. That same focus on memorable hospitality now extends across the wider Group.

Caffè Concerto chief executive Maher Al Hajjar said: “Some customers have known us for decades and others are only discovering us now. I want both to feel included in our celebrations. Thirty years deserves a genuine thank-you shared across our restaurants, and our daily giveaways are one way of placing that thank-you directly into our customers’ hands.

“I am deeply grateful to Stephano, whose vision and determination helped make Caffè Concerto what it is today. As we develop the Caffè Concerto Hospitality Group, we want to carry that same tradition of hospitality from our restaurants and cafés into hotels, bringing together dining, service and an overnight stay.

“Customers often share memories of first dates, birthdays, engagements, family traditions and stays with us, and that is what I treasure most about being in hospitality. In another 30 years, I hope to hear someone say, ‘My parents brought me here, and now I bring my children.’”

Further details of Caffè Concerto’s anniversary menus, giveaways and live music programme, together with updates from the wider Caffè Concerto Hospitality Group, will be announced through its websites, restaurants, hotel and social media channels.