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Out-of-home consumption will recover in 2023. This year, according to the estimates of the Fipe Research Office presented during the Annual Meeting, a value of 89.6 billion will be reached at current prices while in 2022 an expenditure of 83.5 billion. At constant prices, net of the increases brought about by inflation, the situation is reversed: spending on bars, restaurants, pizzerias and catering in 2019 was 97.8 billion. In other words, the world of catering has a gap of 8.2% to make up for. A clear and dark picture for a sector that employs as many as 987 thousand workers in approximately 334 thousand activities and continues to suffer from a lack of personnel. Between October and December, the key period for eating out, merchants are looking for at least 151 thousand catering workers but the staff is effectively nowhere to be found. An evil that affects around 60% of companies affected by the lack of candidates. 57 thousand waiters are needed, just over 30 thousand bartenders and bar waiters, almost 33 thousand cooks and assistant chefs. The situation is no better for canteen workers and cooks: around 10 thousand are needed. We are especially looking for staff over 25 who have already gained specific experience. It is no coincidence that Lino Enrico Stoppani, president of Fipe-Confcommercio, says in his speech: «More structural interventions are needed, aimed at addressing labor issues, in a sector like ours which makes service the rewarding element. Our sector certainly suffers from a reputational factor, because it is not always seen only on the surface without going deeper. Behind these activities there are certainly odd jobs, but they have allowed many young people to finance their studies and to have prospects.” Hence the request for “more targeted policies linked in this phase to labor issues, with the difficulty in renewing national collective agreements, such as ours which expired more than two years ago”.
The relationship with agri-food
Not to forget the synergistic relationship between agri-food supply chains and catering. «Catering is linked to our quality production chains, from production to primary and secondary transformation, up to final distribution – said Francesco Lollobrigida, Minister of Agriculture, Food Sovereignty and Forestry – This guarantees economic growth, the necessary wealth which is created only through investment in the company, which can be redistributed by helping the weakest without incurring debt and without selling off the nation’s strategic assets. Last but not least, our restaurateurs guarantee well-being, for what they feed their customers but also for conviviality, how this happens, in places that are hospitable, where you feel good. This is the reason why all over the world there is such a desire to spend lunches and dinners in Italian restaurants. Because it feels good.”
Adolfo Urso, Minister of Business and Made in Italy, confirmed to the audience the extension for another year, until December 2024, of the dehors, the tables outside the premises «for the benefit of a category that is a key element, strategic of our made in Italy, with which we want to work more and better to allow us to be the positive frontier point of Italian food and wine products” underlines Urso.
The toastgate knot
The category of public establishments must also manage the not always easy relationship between customers, social media and information. This is the case of the controversies seen last summer between expensive receipts, toastgate, false reviews, controversies between service and courtesy to the customer. «Everyone remembers the summer controversies over the so-called inflated receipts – recalls Stoppani – with the alleged mischief of some of our operators who applied increases compared to the basic price of some products supplied, thus unleashing a hurricane of defamation. In fact, there is the strange claim that in our bars and restaurants every additional service must be understood as a courtesy, without realizing that that courtesy still has an additional cost for the operator”. The speech by President Fipe ends with «Public establishments, which make conviviality their business, have a social aspect and a potential for territorial protection that very few other activities express, places of our culture, symbols of our way of understand community and freedom”. Words to which the audience gave a standing ovation.