Friday afternoon. Spring time, you can almost smell summer. The bars in the terrace area of your city are full, but you and your friends are lucky: suddenly you see a free table on the other side of the square. You rush to occupy it, but when the waiter arrives to take your order, it turns out that of the six of you in the group, only three are going to have something. “I’m sorry,” he responds, putting the notebook in his pocket. “You don’t reach the minimum”.
The above is an invented scene, but it is becoming easier to find it in bars in Spain. Especially as the rents and the cost of goods makes it difficult for them to reach the coveted threshold of profitability.
“Minimum and mandatory” consumption. The news advances it Vigo Lighthouse: Fed up with groups of customers who ‘colonize’ tables for hours and hours and only order a couple of soft drinks, Van Gogh, one of the most popular cafes in Vigo, has decided to require its customers to have a “mandatory minimum consumption.”
The rule leaves little room for interpretation. It is announced with a sign hanging on the door of the premises. Their goal is also quite clear: improve the profitability of the business and avoid tourists who just want to use the bathrooms.
“Everyone has to consume”. “The intention is that if six kids come to a table, not just two of them order something, but all of them. We had to take these measures because we are talking about an issue of profitability. Everyone who enters the establishment has to consume it,” explains the manager of the cafeteria, Jordi Casado, told the Galician newspaper. It is the waiters themselves who enforce the rule, as well as another one that the establishment applies: only two baby strollers are allowed inside.
“Sometimes people are not aware that space costs money. A child in a stroller does not consume and takes the place of a person who would,” they point out from the premises, who also remember that cars can hinder the passage.
Van Gogh is not the only business in the industry that applies minimum consumption regulations in Vigo. Lighthouse mentions another cafeteria in Calvario that also imposes certain conditions on days when there are media matches, such as those played by Celta, Madrid or Barça. Those in charge allow table reservations, but only for those who are going to dinner. “And those who come on their own, obviously, cannot spend two hours alone with a coffee, it is not profitable,” warns the person in charge of the bar.
Does it only happen in Vigo? No. A quick look at the newspaper archive shows that, although it is not a majority practice, requiring a minimum consumption is beginning to become normal in the sector. In certain tourist spots (such as Barcelona or Ibiza) it dates back years backin some cases with high rates.
Just a few months ago the newspaper The Gazette counted how an establishment in the center of Salamanca had adopted a similar rule, requiring its customers to consume at least one drink and a tapa per person at times of greatest demand (basically on Friday and Saturday nights).
Click on the image to go to the tweet.
A table, 10 euros. “Many people sat on the terrace for two hours with a water or a wine. In the end the bill was five or six euros. Meanwhile, there were lines of people waiting to sit down,” explained the owner of the local charro. “With those numbers it is impossible to keep a bar afloat.”
in autumn ABC echoed another case similar: a bar that requires its clientele to spend at least five euros on League matches. Again it is not a unique case. Not long ago the ‘I’m a Waiter’ account sparked controversy by share a poster in which a bar announces its rates to compensate for “the high costs of broadcasting matches”: if you want a chair you have to pay ten euros. If we talk about a table for four it stays at €30, or €45 if it is for six.
Pulling imagination. Minimum consumption is just one of the strategies with which hoteliers try to protect their profitability. Others go through adjust the price of the drinks depending on the time the customer occupies the tables (the more minutes, the more expensive the coffee is) or even veto who They go to bars alone, without companions. It is also not strange that in Spanish restaurants reservations are already made with an arrival and departure time.
Bead Earrings. The objective is always the same: improve profitability in businesses that are still carrying the hangover of COVID and that in recent years have been marked by the increase in rentthe complications to find qualified labor and the increase in the cost of goods such as the coffee either cocoa. Added to this panorama is the crisis of some of the most successful ‘products’ in the sector, such as the cane either the menu of the dayand the growing competition from other markets. Today, for example, Mercadona already represents a rival to take into account for the bars.
Image | Toa Heftiba (Unsplash)
GIPHY App Key not set. Please check settings