French Restaurants Feel Economic Pinch

Nearly 3,000 restaurants and cafés in France have closed this year, as the crunch begins to bite

Once upon a time, you had to eat your lunch early in Paris or not at all. By 12.30pm, the tables in all the decent, affordable restaurants were taken. If you were late, you had the choice between the doubtful, unswept brasserie on the corner, a McDonald's or something even more unFrench, a sandwich at your desk.

No longer. All over Paris—all over France—restaurant tables are standing empty. The takings of French restaurants and cafés have plunged by 20 per cent this year. Nearly 3,000 restaurants and cafés have gone bust in the first half of 2008—a 30 per cent increase on the same period last year.

Alarm bells are ringing in the French restaurant industry, but also in the French government. If the French have stopped indulging in their favourite sport—eating out—there must be something profoundly disturbed in the state of France.

Bernard Picolet, 59, is the patron of an excellent corner restaurant, Les Amis du Beaujolais, a couple of hundred yards from the Champs Elysées in the 8th arrondissement of Paris.

"I have been here for more than 20 years, and my father and uncle before me. I have never known custom to be so poor," he said.

"People will tell you that it's because of the economic crisis or it's because of the smoking ban [which came into effect in cafés and restaurants in February] or because there are no Americans around. Yes, of course, it is partly the fault of those things but it is also something much worse than that and, I fear, it's not going to get better. The French, these days, are no longer eating like the French. They are eating like the English.

"Younger French people today don't understand or care about food. They are happy to gobble a sandwich or chips, rather than go to a restaurant. They will spend a lot of money going to a nightclub but not to eat a good meal. They have the most sophisticated kinds of mobile telephone but they have no idea what a courgette is. They know all about the internet but they don't know where to start to eat a fish."

M. Picolet, whose restaurant is recommended by most Paris food guides, says that he has lost one in five of his customers since the start of the year. At one time, you had to wait for a table to eat at Les Amis on the Rue du Berri. Now, every lunchtime, there are swaths of empty white tablecloths.

"If it weren't for my faithful, regular customers, I would be dead," M. Picolet said. "And do you know who my most faithful customers are? The English. There are many English people who work around here and they still like to eat a good lunch. The French? The younger French, at any rate. Pah!"

According to a report yesterday by the French financial insurance company Euler Hermes SFAC, no fewer than 1,782 "traditional" French restaurants went bankrupt in the first six months of this year—a 25 per cent increase on 2007. The victims are mostly low or middle-range neighbourhood restaurants, rather than the gastronomically ambitious and high-priced.

The destruction among cafés—a 56 per cent increase in bankruptcies—was even worse, largely because of the smoking ban. Even fast-food restaurants (bankruptcies up 19 per cent) are feeling the pinch.

Marie-Christine Schmitt, who helped to prepare the report for Euler Hermes, said: "This is only the outright bankruptcies. Many other restaurateurs, or café owners, are retiring early or selling up.

"You have a number of factors piled up on top of one another. There has been a collapse in French disposable income, which means that spending on all services and luxuries has fallen. On top of that, you have the smoking ban in public places. On top of that you have the explosion in the costs of foodstuffs, which means that restaurants have been forced to increase prices, and lose customers, or lose money."

Mme Schmitt agrees with M. Picolet, however, that the Great French Restaurant Crisis of 2008 is not just a passing phenomenon. "There has been a change in French behaviour patterns, that is clear," she said.

"There has been a gradual movement away from the French tradition of restaurant-eating towards buying sandwiches or bringing them from home.