A first restaurant has closed it in recent days, another will close on 2 September. There is no sign posted on the door but we are close to: “Closed for dear energy.” Enrico Borrometi is an entrepreneur from Pozzallo in the province of Ragusa and in his premises (a restaurant, a pizzeria, a pastry bar and the beach) he employs almost 70 people but with 15 of these the contract has already been practically terminated. And the worst, he says, is yet to come because we need to calculate the August consumption figures.
Catering on the verge of bankruptcy
Enrico’s is a paradigmatic story of a system, that of catering and hospitality (hotels and not only), which risks going upside down: expensive energy erodes margins, weighs down the accounts, nullifies the efforts made , risks compromising the quality. “In July – says Enrico – I received a bill, only for restaurants, of € 17,190, which can be said to be triple the € 5,500 of July 2021. My supplier replied that he can only make a couple of installments and however, the situation is unsustainable because then I should also pay in installments in August. The truth is that we must intervene in another way. In the meantime, I started turning off some refrigerators and looking for all possible ways to save but it is clear that this is not going anywhere. To this we must add that we record a drop in consumption by tourists which we estimate around 35% compared to last year ».
The restaurateur: “Here are the paradoxes of the system”
We move to another area of Sicily, to Caprileone in the province of Messina. Here is the Antica Filanda, a real excellence of Sicilian catering but not only. In July, a bill of 22 thousand euros was delivered, “more than four times what I paid in previous years – says Nunzio Campisi, one of the owners -. I asked my supplier for an explanation and the answer was clear: there is nothing to be done. I was told there is a risk of further increases. Meanwhile, in one month we went from 24 to 50 cents per kilowatt hour. So, using an example to make the situation clearer, already 10 bulbs of 100 cost 50 cents an hour. For those with a medium voltage contract, there are no parachutes made available by the state. Those who are in low voltage can change their supply, or block a price, even if slightly higher, for six months or a year. We do not. If we want, we must apply at least a year in advance. But no one could predict what would happen in this 2022. Before the pandemic, on average a year I spent between 70,000 and 80,000 euros on electricity. This year the forecast is to touch 300 thousand euros. It means working in a vacuum: in this way we will not have any gain, on the contrary: we are working below cost with the customers with whom we closed contracts months ago and from whom we cannot ask for an increase in electricity ».
But Campisi also underlines the paradoxes of the system that risk being punitive especially at times like these: “If within a month, perhaps because it is hot, I turn on all the air conditioners in the structure, as well as ovens, dishwashers and lights, enough to absorb 150 kW for 10 minutes instead of the 100 Kw allowed by my contract even if it happens only once in a month I pay the increase in power and system charges for the entire month. For the whole month and not just for those 10 minutes – says the restaurateur from Messina -. Do you think that before they forced us to pay like this for the whole year, only for those few minutes in which we exceeded. At least this, in the past, we have managed to change it, making a big voice all together, as a category. Now, we are considering what to do, because that way we won’t be able to go on for much longer. My customers see a bill rise, they also see coffee and bitters marked that we used to pay homage to. Now we can no longer afford it and we try to recover from all sides. The alternative is bankruptcy ».
The alarm: they risk closing in the thousands
To understand how serious the situation is in the whole region, it is enough to hear for a few minutes Dario Pistorio, restaurateur from Catania and regional president of Fipe di Confcommercio: “The owners of the most important restaurants in Catania call me continuously, – he says – the July bills are be a slap, those in August are likely to be a punch: a restaurateur paid 32 thousand euros in July, one thousand euros a day, double the same month of the previous year. And then there are those who paid triple and so on. Ours are not considered energy-intensive companies and therefore do not have any concessions. We estimate that at least 20% of companies in the sector risk going upside down due to the increase in the cost of energy ». A concern that prompted Confcommercio to ask the Region to call a technical table: “We must also start a discussion with the supplier companies – says Gianluca Manenti, regional president of Confcommercio Sicilia -. The sector is seriously in danger of going to the bottom ».