QUALITALY_136

September/October 2023 VIII MAGAZINE RECEIPT HIDES A REAL PROBLEM: RISING COSTS AND THE ILLUSION OF BEING ABLE TO CONTINUE EATING OUT AT LOW PRICES by Anna Muzio Mysterious appearances on the bill and levies, service and cover charge, surcharges for ‘ghost’ guests, non-eaters such as children and - the latest case in Ravenna - dogs who were allegedly charged a cover charge. And the ‘light’ news that marked the summer of 2023: the now mythical surcharge for cutting toast in Gera Lario, in the Como area. Have club owners gone mad, are customers getting mad over nothing, or have they started looking at receipts more closely? The truth is that things have come to a head. After years in which the restaurant industry lived on low prices (the famous 8 or 10 euro lunch breaks, for example) came a series of catastrophic and partly unpredictable events, such as the Covid pandemic, the unexpected, such as the war in Ukraine (now also in Israel), or simply ignored for years, such as the climate emergency. They have raised the fixed costs (from energy to rents) and ingredient costs of every restaurant. All this within a predictable recession, which has led struggling diners, now used to eating out several times a week, to ‘tighten their belt’ and curtail their outings. WHAT ABOUT THE TIP? It is interesting to see what is happening abroad. Because the crisis is global and hospitality, perhaps for the first time in history, is facing the same problems - from rising prices to staff shortages - everywhere. There are those who believe that an ‘American-style’ system such as tipping can partially solve the issue, providing a surplus for employees under pressure and absorbing part of the service. Since January 2023, a law (Art. 1 Paragraphs 58 to 62 of Law No. 197/22) has made tips tax- exempt, on which companies do not pay contributions and the employee is only taxed 5%. It is a tool, however, that few use. Habit or unwillingness of the customer? Is it fair to put part of the potential income of someone who already does demanding work into their hands? The fact remains that precisely in the USA, the home of tips, many restaurants are moving in the opposite direction, introducing a ‘service’ item (ranging from 3 to 20 per cent) with the idea of changing the entire system, highlighting for the customer the (more than real) costs of a table service (including the cut of the sandwich). Journalist Amy McCarthy poses the question well, writing in Eater : ‘One of the reasons it is so difficult to raise prices is that they have been artificially low for a long time. At some point, restaurants will have to tell their customers how much the food we buy from them really costs. It is difficult to make people realise how thin the margins are in the restaurant industry when prices are constantly falsified to make them seem more attractive to customers’. COVER CHARGES TO AVOID HIDING COSTS IN THE DISHES Dialogue with the customer and transparency, even in view of the summer controversy, seems essential in such a difficult context. This includes that bread and cover charge that for some remains a medieval levy but which with very few exceptions (see regional law 21/2006 that outlawed it in Lazio) reigns. Desiree Brunet of drinc.milano and Broadwine (a contemporary osteria that actually does not have tablecloths, but relies heavily on ‘five-star’ customer service, borrowed from the hotel industry)