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Bistro to bust: Brussels’ restaurants fear (sanitized) ‘new normal’

by editor

Bloodbath. Carnage. Massacre.

For many restaurant and bar owners in Brussels, the lifting of lockdown measures feels less like a return to normal life than a death sentence.

Faced with sanitary requirements that would more than halve their daily turnover, restaurateurs are warning that being asked to reopen without further financial assistance from the government will mean heavy losses that could force them to shut down permanently.

“The lockdown was a cakewalk compared to this — everything was at a standstill,” said Benjamin Raickman, co-owner and manager of the popular Saint-Gilles bar and bistro Le Dillens. “Deconfinement is where we’re at risk. We have no idea what’s going to happen.”

It’s a dilemma facing restaurants, cafés and bars across Europe, as they scramble to meet new sanitary requirements that will cut deeply into their ability to turn a profit. Many are also soul-searching about what kind of experience they can give their customers from behind a face mask.

“Morale is very low. It’s honestly really difficult to lift your head up and say OK, let’s do this” — Benjamin Raickman, co-owner and manager of Le Dillens

In Berlin, where restaurants reopened in mid-May, the local gastronomy association called the post-lockdown experience a “catastrophe.” French restaurants have said it would take a “miracle” for them to be ready to welcome back customers in a few weeks. And some Spanish restaurant owners are installing plastic screens and thermal cameras that would read diners’ temperature as part of a pilot project.

In Belgium, bosses have been relying on temporary relief measures to keep their businesses afloat, furloughing their staff and paying themselves a small salary. The state has also pressed pause on some tax and social security payments.

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But restaurant owners are warning that if the government does not extend support past the reopening date — which could be as soon as June 8 — there will be long-lasting damage to the hospitality industry, which employs at least 130,000 people, generates €14 billion in revenue and pays the most VAT of any sector.

“We are facing a potential massacre, where there are more deaths from suicide in the industry than from COVID-19,” Raickman said.

“I’m not saying that flippantly,” he added. “Morale is very low. It’s honestly really difficult to lift your head up and say OK, let’s do this.”

* * *

Belgium’s hospitality industry was already in crisis mode before the coronavirus epidemic forced businesses to shut their doors.

The city’s first lockdown, after the Paris terror attacks in 2015, put a dent in their turnover, as people obeyed new curfews and became fearful of going out. Then came the Brussels attacks. Since then, high rents, social security payments and employer costs have kept margins thin. Now this.

“This crisis didn’t hit at just any time,” said Raickman. “We were all about to reopen our terraces. And when you see the weather we’ve had in March, in April … I can already tell you my revenue numbers for the year.”

Like most other restaurants in the city, Le Dillens has tried to adapt to the crisis. It’s turned itself into a local “market,” where people can pick up produce, meats, wines and artisanal goods from its suppliers. Others have started offering takeaway dishes, brunch boxes and bottled cocktails. But that isn’t nearly enough to keep things running, let alone turn a profit in the long term without government intervention, said Raickman.

For Denis Delcampe, the chef and owner of Le Tournant, a small bistro in Ixelles, the future looks fairly black and white. If the government sets a date for restaurants to reopen but doesn’t extend relief measures to businesses like his, he’ll have no option but to shut down.

Brussels restaurant bosses have been relying on temporary relief measures to keep their businesses afloat | Nicolas Maeterlinck/AFP via Getty Images

“In a place like ours, the strict sanitary regulations are impossible to follow,” he said. It’s a small, cozy space, where diners typically bump elbows as they eat. Spacing out tables would more than halve the number of customers he can seat in any given evening — if they turn up at all.

“I can’t take in 20, 30 or 40 percent of my usual revenue and still keep my commitment to my employees,” he said. “Then I have to lay them off, I have to give them notice, I’ll have to pay them what they’re owed, and then I’m out of business. No question.”

In Brussels, the state so far has focused on helping out bigger establishments, chains and hotels with 50 or more employees. Smaller businesses received €4,000 in compensation, which, in many cases, isn’t enough to cover rent. (This being Belgium, each regional government has responded in different ways; there is no federal plan yet.)

“You could say they’ve done more for McDonald’s and Burger King than they have for businesses like ours,” said Raickman, who works with local producers and advocates for more sustainability in the restaurant business.

The hospitality sector feels “cornered, abandoned,” Antoine Pinto, the owner of Belga Queen, wrote in an open letter to Prime Minister Sophie Wilmès

In early May, a group of 40 chefs from some of Belgium’s most well-known restaurants — including Belga Queen, L’Entrée des Artistes and Chou de Bruxelles — staged a protest on Brussels’ Grand Place, laying out their chef whites and holding up placards with the number of people they employ, next to pictures of hangmen.

The hospitality sector feels “cornered, abandoned,” Antoine Pinto, the owner of Belga Queen, wrote in an open letter to Prime Minister Sophie Wilmès. He called on the government to take more far-reaching steps, including lowering VAT rates on food, exonerating businesses from social security payments for 2020, and declaring a state of emergency for the industry and their suppliers.

“We’re in a critical, explosive situation,” he wrote.

* * *

Alongside the economic anxiety are concerns about the impact on the restaurant experience — especially in places like Brussels where dining and drinking out are an important part of the city’s culture.

“Brussels is a super social place,” said Chloé Roose, the co-founder of Brussels’ Kitchen, a popular online culinary guide to the city and author of two books on the city’s best restaurants. “It’s a very spontaneous city. There are always people out drinking on the sidewalks outside bars, it’s very free that way.”

“I’m super worried about that,” she added. “Unless places find ways to make it fun, going to a restaurant will be really weird. I don’t see the plexiglass thing happening.”

A guide on “best practices” for reopening in the midst of the crisis, published by the industry publication Horeca Magazine, calls on restaurants to behave “based on the principle that everyone can be a possible source of infection,” warning that the reputational blow of becoming the source of a cluster of new cases would be “incalculable.”

Belgium’s Prime Minister, Sophie Wilmès | Laurie Dieffembacq/AFP via Getty Images

 

Among its recommendations: reorganize the kitchen to separate employees; space tables at least 1.5 meters apart; don’t serve at the bar; sanitize tables and chairs after every customer; remove physical menus and salt and peppers shakers. It’s a long list.

Some are taking those recommendations in stride. “We have to play along and change how we work,” said Arthur Lhoist, who runs two restaurants named Tero, one in Brussels and one in Wallonia, as well as a farm that supplies both with local produce.

“We’re talking about moving tables, capping groups at four people, having servers wash their hands after clearing every table, providing hand sanitizer at the door,” he said.

Staff will wear face masks, but he’s hoping to find ways to personalize them and make them look less severe, he said. “We know we’ll have to bring some humor and help people relax.”

“I hope that we will have a queue of people waiting to come back, but we have no certainty whatsoever” — Christophe Hardiquest, owner of Bon Bon

At Bon Bon, a two Michelin-starred restaurant in the Brussels suburbs, tables are already set several meters apart and hygiene levels are high, so not much will change beyond the addition of face masks, said chef and owner Christophe Hardiquest.

For him, the biggest challenge is not adapting to new regulations — which he acknowledged would be less difficult at Bon Bon than in a cramped bistro — but the uncertainty of whether people will want to come back at all.

“I’m crossing my fingers,” he said. “I hope that we will have a queue of people waiting to come back, but we have no certainty whatsoever.”

About 60 percent of Hardiquest’s customers come from outside Belgium and with travel restricted for the foreseeable future, he is drawing up alternative business plans that will allow him to keep his 24 full-time staff on board.

In Berlin, where restaurants reopened in mid-May, the local gastronomy association called the post-lockdown experience a “catastrophe” | Maja Hitij/Getty Images

“We’ll have to adapt our offer to demand,” he said. “Will people want to spend as much time at the table as they used to? I don’t think so. There’s a big possibility people will be afraid. Some will come back, maybe in the first week, but how long will it last?”

For other restaurants, complying with the new rules may be tougher — or downright impossible.

“It’s bullshit,” Delcampe said of the proposed guidelines. “Everyone knows that after two hours, when people have been drinking, there’s no way to maintain social distancing between people.

“If the intention is to have people enjoy an evening spent in a restaurant, social distancing is incompatible with that, because the experience of a restaurant is about human contact,” he said. “I can’t imagine my sommelier explaining the wine list or the menu with a mask on.”

“If they start asking us to wear masks, to put up plexiglass walls, that kind of thing, I mean who wants to go to a place like that?” — Benjamin Raickman

For kitchen staff, too, the new measures aren’t realistic, according to Delcampe. “If we’re on full blast, and it’s 50 degrees in the kitchen, and we’ve got orders to fire, you can’t wear a mask, it’s impossible to work like that. Cooking is also about tasting — there’s not one element of the food I serve that I don’t taste.”

Raickman is similarly wary of having to police distances between customers, saying it will fundamentally change their experience. “If they start asking us to wear masks, to put up plexiglass walls, that kind of thing, I mean who wants to go to a place like that?”

“A restaurant should be a place to relax,” he said. “If we turn them into anxiety-inducing places, they lose their purpose. A bistro where you’re served from behind a mask like you’re at the dentist’s office? It’s pointless.”

This article is part of POLITICO’s premium policy service: Pro Agriculture and Food. From food safety to animal disease, pesticides and more, our specialized journalists keep you on top of the topics driving the agriculture policy agenda. Email [email protected] for a complimentary trial.

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