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Europe’s crippling energy crisis is affecting Brussels’ vibrant restaurant scene, forcing owners to come up with creative solutions to stay afloat and pressuring the government to offer financial support.
A group of Brussels restaurants launched the initiative “Brussels in the Dark” where they served food without using energy to draw the attention of the government and the public towards the skyrocketing prices that are causing turmoil for small businesses.
Others have tweaked menus and cut staff, as they struggle to survive an energy crisis sparked by Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war on Ukraine – more than a year after the industry’s stringent COVID lockdown. Right after getting battered by.
“Every day I am paying off the debt of the corona crisis and now I have to deal with the energy crisis,” said Pierre Milaur, co-founder of Brussels in the Dark, who runs the hip Lycee restaurant in Saint Gilles. Millour said she has considered closing several times, having already been forced to close some bakeries and stores.
The HoReCa Federation, which represents 300,000 Belgians employed in the hospitality industry, is Call A reduction in social security contributions for their businesses in 2023, a temporary 6 percent drop in VAT for the next three quarters, and the accelerated disbursement of aid.
survival blanket
Meanwhile, the city of Brussels has another proposal: blankets.
Benoît Hellings, alderman for climate from the Greens, told POLITICO that the city launched this pilot project in December, with 600 distributed. Cloud – as they call the locally and sustainably produced blankets – for cafes, restaurants and hotels with outdoor terraces, to help them cut down on outdoor heating.
The idea was to create something “positive” in light of the climate crisis and the war in Ukraine, he said, “with the goal of making sure we can have a drink outside without destroying the climate and saving energy at the same time.” Can.”
If the project is successful after the test phase that ends in March, it will be expanded “largely for next winter,” Hellings said ahead of the launch. He claimed that those using outdoor heaters could save a significant amount of energy depending on their energy contract.
But it’s not clear how many places are actually using outdoor heaters, Hellings acknowledged. Based on Politico research the favorite after-work haunt of the EU institutions, the Place du Luxembourg, many places that theoretically have outdoor heaters do not use them.
Some restaurant owners in Brussels are furious at the city’s blanket initiative, with Mano de Robeno of Le Petit Mercado in St. Gilles – whose wife and co-owner Pia Renaudat is one of Brussels’ founders – calling it a “disgrace” People work in restaurants.
Energy costs are three times higher than usual, de Robeno and others say, and the fact that the biggest cost comes from the kitchen shows how “disconnected” politicians are when proposing initiatives such as distributing blankets. .
Georgios Kyriakos, manager of La Pizza a Bella Cocktail, an Italian restaurant on Place de Londres, highlights another problem: fewer customers.
“Not only us, our customers also have higher bills [do] Also, so they do not have a lot of money to spend outside,” he said, pointing to a vicious cycle for the hospitality sector.
creativity for energy
But instead of giving up, some restaurant owners are getting creative as they struggle to survive.
Alessandro Miranda, who runs a restaurant named after his family in Chatelain, has adapted the menu to high energy prices with so-called cold-cooking techniques, to avoid using electricity as much as possible. Their menu now includes a venison tartare, which showcases a variety of raw meat and raw vegetables marinated with salt, vinegar, sugar and spices.
“As a chef, I’m challenging myself to explore new, more sustainable ways of cooking,” said Miranda, who wants to make an “active” contribution to the fight against the energy crisis.
Leece’s Millour explained that rising energy costs forced them to cut staff expenses, and for a few months ran the restaurant themselves one day a week.
Eggplant on the roofs
Meanwhile, the Brussels regional government is planning to provide financial support for the areas most affected by the energy crisis – not now.
“We are working in Brussels to help the economy,” said Barbara Tracht, Brussels secretary of state for economic transition from the Francophone climate-conscious Ecolo party.
That said, the scheme is meant to provide support to industries that have been hit the most by rising energy prices, as identified in a july study, including the hospitality sector. This includes subsidies from a budget of €117 million from 2021 to cover 30 percent of “additional costs” based on a comparison with this year’s bills.
measures like “Energy and Reno” loan — which aims to reduce the energy consumption of small businesses — should help accelerate the energy transition in the long term, Trash said.
Support should be available from early 2023, but opposition politicians prefer Gilles Verstraeten From the Flemish nationalist party N-VA, has complained that the details are unclear and that support is arriving too late.
For his part, Miller fears the worst.
Without immediate support, he said, the Brussels food scene would then only be “off-season moussakas served by unpaid bikers or restaurants that do eggplant on their terraces and sell it for €100.”
Daniela Di Lorenzo contributed reporting.