In the middle of the mayor’s short speech, it gets pretty quiet in the group. “I still don’t hear any applause here,” Dieter Reiter (SPD) teases himself at this point, because he knows that he just said something almost outrageous. “A four-day week with full wage compensation”, that would also be a possibility to solve the personnel problems in the catering trade. Even if the Bavarian President of the Hotel and Restaurant Association Dehoga, Angela Inselkammer, is more likely to think of the four-day week as merely distributing the same working time of five days over four days.
Reiter refers to a corresponding study in England that examined the effects of a four-day week with full wage compensation and found that employees were significantly more motivated and productive: “Perhaps you should read a study like this!”
The hosts of Munich’s city center and their guests gathered this Monday evening in the magnificent courtyard of the town hall to celebrate a summer festival for the second time. You certainly don’t do them an injustice when you say: For one or the other of them it was certainly a surprisingly new idea to organize working hours in such a way that the employees also enjoy it and not just the landlady or landlady.
The sensation: a beer mug with 0.2 liters
Reiter’s appeal against a municipal packaging tax and against a renewed increase in VAT on food, which had been reduced to seven percent in the wake of the corona pandemic, was received more benevolently: “One shouldn’t put an additional burden on the citizens.” And there should also have been sympathizers in the group for “the sensation right at the beginning” (Reiter). The mayor presented a glass beer mug with a capacity of 0.2 liters (and a little saucer) as “the new Wiesnmass”. For the same price, of course.
The Association of Munich Downtown Innkeepers is an association of restaurants in the old town – “something like this is unique in Germany,” as its chairman Gregor Lemke from the Augustiner Klosterwirt explains. Before the pandemic, people met in a member restaurant at the beginning of the year for a joint dinner with guests in order to present the wishes of the innkeepers to city politicians. Since 2022, a summer festival in the town hall has been used for this purpose, after all the Ratskeller landlords also belong to the association.
And Munich’s political celebrities don’t have it that far either – on this evening they are represented by the mayor, the third mayor Verena Dietl (SPD), economics officer Clemens Baumgärtner and municipal officer Kristina Frank (both CSU) as well as the Wiesn city councilor Anja Berger (Greens ) and other city councillors. Lemke makes it easy for them this time and “saves you two hours of Fidel Castro”. They know anyway that the staff situation is currently putting all restaurateurs to a hard test, and it is not at their discretion to extend the VAT limit.
The Wirte-Wiesn will also take place again
Apart from that, there are mainly positive things to report, the new Spöckmeier, the Weiberwirtschaft im Tal, the Weinhaus Neuner and the Pizzarei are now added to the 33 club members so far. The Wirtshaus Zum Stiftl has moved from the valley to the Weinstraße, and its host Lorenz Stiftl, Lemke’s predecessor as chairman of the association, can also celebrate his birthday this evening. Together with friends, colleagues and competitors, so to speak. Or, to joke with Gregor Lemke: “We like to exchange ideas, understand and support each other, sometimes we even like each other!”
Of course, it is then easy to celebrate a Wirtshaus-Wiesn parallel to the real Oktoberfest again this year, in the affiliated restaurants. And collecting for one or the other good cause: 17,400 euros were raised this year for the initiative of children with cancer, and another 3,000 euros for the Bunte Münchner Kindl foundation of Reiter’s wife Petra.