French Restaurants Feel Economic Pinch

Nearly 3,000 restaurants and cafés have gone bust in the first half of 2008—a 30 per cent increase on the same period last year.

 Alarm bells are ringing in the French
restaurant industry, but also in the French government. According to
a report yesterday by the French financial insurance company Euler
Hermes SFAC, no fewer than 1,782 "traditional" French
restaurants went bankrupt in the first six months of this year—a 25
per cent increase on 2007. The victims are mostly low or middle-range
neighbourhood restaurants, rather than the gastronomically ambitious
and high-priced.

The destruction among cafés—a
56 per cent increase in bankruptcies—was even worse, largely
because of the smoking ban. Even fast-food restaurants (bankruptcies
up 19 per cent) are feeling the pinch.