A special works council took place at the Lunch Garden headquarters in Evere on Monday morning. The unions received confirmation of what had already been announced in recent days: Lunch Garden filed for bankruptcy, followed by a partial takeover by the Antwerp investment company CIM Capital.
Lunch Garden wants to make a new start with 42 of the 62 restaurants and to achieve this, approximately half of its own staff – about 300 of about 600 people – could remain on board. Permanent staff continues to account for 70 percent of the workforce, the remaining 30 percent must be filled by flexi-job workers and temporary employment. “It is still unclear who can stay, and also how those who remain will have to work and under what employment conditions,” said Bjorn Desmet of the socialist trade union ABVV.
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Which branches are closing?
The twenty Lunch Garden restaurants that will have to close are both company-owned and franchise restaurants. This list has already reached us from trade union sources, which has not yet been confirmed by Lunch Garden itself. This concerns the self-managed branches in Froyennes, Inno Nieuwstraat, Messancy, Sint-Denijs-Westrem, Sint-Kruis-Brugge and Wilrijk and the franchise restaurants in Arlon, Antwerp (Inno Meir), Edegem, Evere, Flémalle, Ghent, Hannuit. , Hasselt, Libramont, Oudergem, Sint-Agatha-Berchem, Waterloo and Wépion. The Bistro Garden in Tervuren will also close.
The restaurants in Ans, Boncelles, Gosselies, Kortrijk (Noord), Kraainem, Olen, Rocourt, Turnhout and Waterloo Mont Saint Jean can remain open if a candidate is found.
-“Tough decision”
“This is a very tough decision, but it is the only way to build a sustainable future and preserve as many jobs as possible,” says Stephan Brouwers, CEO of Lunch Garden, in the press release.
The restaurant chain says it has had “challenging” years. The mandatory closures during the corona pandemic had a “profound financial impact that is still being felt today”. Certain locations dragged down the performance of the entire chain, and costs rose due to high inflation and indexations. There has been “a positive trend in turnover and operating profit” over the past two years, but “this turned out to be insufficient to support the necessary investments”, according to Lunch Garden. As a result, shareholder ICG had to continue to inject money, and that was no longer sustainable.
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Lunch Garden hopes to realize the restart as soon as possible, “possibly today”. “We are now looking forward to a new phase with a new shareholding to further strengthen Lunch Garden and make it future-proof,” Brouwers added. The new shareholder, the Antwerp investment company CIM Capital, and the curator will meet on Monday afternoon.
