Chef Thierry Marx is president of the Union of Hotel and Catering Trades (Umih). Meal vouchers that he no longer wants to see spent in mass distribution, demand for a law on “homemade” to protect French restaurateurs and farmers, links with the agricultural world… He takes stock of the major issues of the sector.
How is the hotel and restaurant sector doing?
We have an average of 23 establishments closing every day. And for one restaurant that opens, five close. We cannot return to the pre-Covid situation.
How to explain it?
There are plenty of reasons: the development of home delivery, teleworking, etc. And there is clearly an over-representation of catering, a word that I think needs to be protected. Today, everyone is a restaurateur: the fast-food restaurant, the baker, the small supermarket that sells ready-made meals to reheat… In some cities, there is too much competition from people who are not really restaurateurs. In the 70s, you ate in a bistro for an hour's minimum wage. Today, the hourly minimum wage is spent at fast food restaurants or at a standing table in a bakery.
Can't the sector benefit from the effect of the Olympic Games?
I have experienced four Olympics, and I have never seen that the Olympics brought anything at the moment, in terms of ability to generate income. It was illusory to think so. On the other hand, there are tourism prospects, the visibility of Paris and France over the coming years is good. People want to see the monument where the fencing or archery competition took place. The occupancy rates in hotels for 2025 are also very interesting.
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What are the solutions to support restaurateurs?
First of all, let's have the meal vouchers returned to us (since 2022, it is possible to use them for food shopping, Editor's note). What is happening is scandalous, and it doesn't help anyone. For catering, this is a shortfall of 576 million euros, to the benefit of mass distribution. The government must reverse its decision to extend this exemption.
The food title would help a lot of people.
But this measure was taken to support employees in the face of inflation. What do you recommend?
The creation of a food voucher, another social advantage to spend on shopping. I plan to bring all securities issuers to the table to move forward with this idea. The meal voucher only benefits 17% of employees, the food voucher would help many more people, the student who has a precarious job or people on fixed-term contracts for example. There would be no cost to the taxpayer, just to the company that makes this choice.
What form would this food title take?
It would be “sustainable”, reserved for purchases of products manufactured and processed in France. For people in economic difficulties, it would also be a way to tell them that they can buy quality products. Today, cheap chicken comes from Brazil or Ukraine. But if you give people purchasing power back, they are not stupid: they will buy French chicken, good products for their health. We would thus help the…
