Despite the fact that restaurants have tweaked their final prices upward, Italians are not stopping frequenting them. “Consumption in the restaurant industry has marked a growth of 17.9 percent,” writes Gambero Rosso, citing the Confimprese-Jakala Catering Observatory for the period between January and April.
The adjustments to the final bill are noticeable: 82 percent, mainly due to the rise in overall costs that mainly include electricity and gas bills, which in April alone were up 16.7 percent from a year earlier while raw materials rose 12.1 percent.
Gourmet Monthly attributes the good performance of the restaurant industry, especially in the evening for dinner, to a “revenge effect” given by “a sense of revenge after the Covid years that pushes people to eat out, making up for lost opportunities, having all those experiences that have been forbidden – on and off – for almost two years.” Then there is also the fact that “the offer is constantly growing, increasingly multifaceted and specialized, from single-issue establishments to vegan restaurants, from foreign cuisines to street food.”
On the flipside, there is also no shortage of the tourist effect, the flow of which – Istat data in hand – is in “45.5 percent increase in total presences” only in the months of January and February, generally not particularly lively for the sector, and with a peculiarity: a +70.5 percent is made only by the presence of foreign tourists.
The Prawn then notes much of the credit for this increase in overall tourist flows must also be attributed to “the new openings of large international chains” such as Pret A Manger, which very recently opened its first Italian outlet at Milan Malpensa airport. Or EL&N – “an acronym for eat, live and nourish – one of the most ‘Instagrammed’ coffee shop chains in the world thanks to its total pink design,” which again chose Milan as the location for its Italian landing. Or the arrival of Starbucks in the center of Rome.
Factors that, all together, push more and more Italians to leave home in the evening to sit around a table and dine.
