Magazine: Catering sector: an evaluation in numbers

Experts of the Guild of Hungarian Restaurateurs (MVI) are doing a study on the state of play in the Horeca sector. Here are some of the highlights: tourism is one of the most important sectors at national economy level, contributing 8.5 percent of the GDP and employing 500,000 people. In June 2014 there were about 55,000 catering units in Hungary, from which 90 percent were commercial and 10 percent were public service and event catering units. In 2014 total gross sales of catering units were HUF 816 billion – 8.3 percent more than in 2013. HUF 705 billion came from commercial catering and HUF 111 billion was from public service and event catering. Consumer prices were up 2.4 percent from the level of the previous year and the volume of sales rose 5.7 percent.73.3 percent of turnover was realised by food and the rest was generated by alcoholic drinks (11.5 percent), non-alcoholic drinks (10.9 percent), coffee (3.7 percent) and other products (0.6 percent). There were 168,000 people working in accommodation service providing and catering in 2014, 6.4 percent more than in 2013 (three quarters of these people were working in catering). In 2012 there were 13,000 sole traders and 14,000 companies. From the latter 99.2 percent were SMEs. It is quite probable that the 5.7-percent sales growth in the catering sector in 2014 was mainly the result of the introduction of online cash registers and not the result of consumption growth