The British government's measure of paying half the bill in restaurants appears to be a success. According to a study published on Monday, it brings a welcome boost to a sector devastated by the pandemic. In the first two weeks of August, the number of people who went to the restaurant from Monday to Wednesday, on days when the offer is valid, jumped 26.9% over one year, the research center points out. economic CEBR.
Read also: Coronavirus: the state at the bedside of hoteliers and restaurateurs
On the other hand, from Thursday to Sunday, when the offer is no longer valid, attendance fell by 26.9%, adds the CEBR, which relies on data from the OpenTable reservations site. And for the entire week, the drop is limited to 7.1%, while it was 28.2% before the implementation of the measure. For Nina Skero, economist at CEBR, it is " impossible to deny that the initiative of the Chancellor (of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak) was a success ".
The device, called Eat Out to Help Out (literally, eating out to lend a hand), is part of stimulus measures announced by Rishi Sunak at the start of the summer to restart an economy that had been brought to its knees by months of confinement. It consists of subsidizing, only for the month of August, 50% of the bill in restaurants, up to 10 pounds per person, from Monday to Wednesday. At a cost of £ 500million, the measure is supposed to help a sector which employs 1.8 million people in the UK.
For the CEBR, this is a welcome boost that " does more for the return to normalcy in the UK than a lot of government recommendations ". The Ministry of Finance had announced to him that the device financed 10.5 million meals during the first week of August.
Read also: Great Britain: 730,000 jobs destroyed since March
It is even the attendance of all downtown businesses that jumped that week, compared to the previous one, with an increase of 18.9% after 6 p.m. and 9.6% per hour. lunch, according to the Springboard firm.
More than 22,000 restaurant jobs have been cut since the start of the year, twice as many as for 2019 as a whole, recently revealed a study by the Center for Retail Research, a retail firm. It also showed that 1,467 restaurants have closed, an increase of 59.1% compared to the whole of 2019.
The Italian restaurant chain Pizza Express notably announced a restructuring plan to cut 1,100 jobs. This is in addition to the bankruptcy filings of Italian restaurants Carluccio's, of the Casual Dining Group, which owns the Café Rouge and Bella Italia chains, and of the Byron hamburger brand.
