The out-of-control increases in electricity, gas and food are crushing collective catering. Between 2020 and 2022, according to the surveys of Oricon, the Collective Catering and Nutrition Observatory, the weight of electricity increased tenfold while the incidence of gas on revenues increased 15 times from 0.3% to 3% , 7% on the cost of the meal. Not to mention the price increases for transport and packaging. «Unsustainable increases for companies if no action is taken on costs and the renegotiation of procurement contracts – warns Carlo Scarsciotti, president of Oricon -. Without a timely intervention by the government, companies risk by the end of the year no longer being able to guarantee an essential service for families such as school canteens ». In essence, businesses, continues the president, work at a loss. “We are now working with a negative margin of over 10 points” urges Scarsciotti. The sector in 2019 had a gross operating margin of around 5.5% of the value of production while now the costs clearly exceed the agreed prices.
In Italy there are over 1,100 SMEs that provide collective catering services and several, after the health emergency, are in a condition of extreme economic fragility. The president does not hide the fact that this situation is destined to worsen in the coming months. In order to try to safeguard the sector, Scarsciotti asks for «a mandatory price revision regime upon the occurrence of particular conditions of an objective nature, such as the increases we are witnessing, which cannot be foreseen at the time the offer is formulated. This adjustment must in no way fall on the final consumer and on families ».
«It would be necessary to have the automatic revision of the economic conditions – adds Chiara Nasi, Cirfood president -. Most of our contracts are with the PA and subject to review only if required by the contract. In the same way, with private customers we try to obtain revisions in line with the Istat index ». The creation of a “standard tender” is hoped for indicating a suitable auction base, or a price of the service adequate to the basic requests. “We hope the overcoming of evaluation systems that attribute greater points and therefore greater value to services or elements that have nothing to do with the meal and its administration and that tenders are drawn up entrusted with logic that reward the design quality of the companies where the economic component is predefined and not subject to discounts “suggests the chairman who asks” the use of the concession institution for the assignment of school meals only in cases where the competent bodies provide coverage and solutions for the solvency problems of families who live in conditions of poverty “.