Like a student in front of the class, the seasoned Wiesn landlord Peter Reichert stands in front of the press to report on his work. He looks modestly around and expresses himself very briefly, with a shy smile. “We’ve prepared very, very well,” says Reichert. They now have a “staff of excellent people” at their side. To ensure that the mood in the Bräurosl marquee is good and stays that way, there is a hygiene concept, a new safety concept and a dedicated cooling system costing 120,000 euros. What he does not say: that he has learned lessons from the problems of the last year.
That’s what Andres Steinfatt says for him, he’s the boss of Paulaner and Hacker-Pschorr and the person who hired Reichert last year as host for the Bräurosl, one of the 14 big festival tents at the Oktoberfest. At the press conference this Tuesday in the Marienplatz hall of the Donisl tavern, he wants to show that he still stands firmly behind his Wiesn host.
Peter Reichert is running the Bräurosl for the second time and wants to do a lot better this time.
(Photo: Catherine Hess)
For starters, he introduces himself like a teacher to Reichert and his partner Franziska Kohlpaintner, who are announced on an information sheet as the host couple of the marquee, and says: “The homework has been done.” A lot has been written in the media, things have been processed or “in final work”, but now you just want to look ahead.
Despite investigations by the public prosecutor’s office into physical injury and violations of hygiene and food regulations last year and a penalty order from the Munich district court, the district administration department certified the Bräurosl and Donisl host’s general reliability as a restaurateur, so that the city of Reichert continued to confirm it as a Oktoberfest host in May. At the time, he had already lodged an objection to the penalty order, admitted mistakes and apologized. Reichert and his partner “taken it very seriously,” said Steinfatt on Tuesday.
The “Tanker” Bräurosl, as Steinfatt calls the huge marquee, with its 8,250 seats has a different dimension than the smaller tent “Zur Schönheitskönigin” on the Oidn Wiesn, which Reichert used to run with his then wife Gerda Reichert. In order to be able to steer the tanker more smoothly through the sea this year, Reichert has put together a “competence team”. And he likes to let the experts speak for themselves this Tuesday.
There is, for example, the specialist lawyer and professor for food law from the Technical University of Munich, Alfred Meyer, who presents the new hygiene concept at Bräurosl. Supplying such a large marquee with fresh food is a logistical challenge. It’s about the question of how to keep the cold chains for the products or who has to clean where and how so that cleanliness is constantly guaranteed. The new cooling system for food constantly measures the temperature and sends warning signals directly to the cell phones of those involved if something is wrong. He experiences Reichert as “capable of learning”, according to Meyer. “And he wants to learn something and set standards for himself.”
Fabian Schäfer from the f-Quadrat company is also supposed to help Reichert organize the giant party in the marquee, with his own safety concept and an internal medical service in the tent. And Franziska Kohlpaintner promises that the “proven music concept” – that is, the brass band Josef Menzl during the day and the party band “Erwin und die Heckflossen” in the evening – will be retained, albeit with better sound quality in the tent.