Restaurants, bars and cafés employ significantly fewer people than before the corona pandemic. Last September there were 6.7 percent fewer employees working in the German catering industry than in September 2019, the Federal Statistical Office said. The loss of employees is particularly significant in the area of beverage serving: here the number fell by twelve percent. Caterers employed 8.6 percent fewer staff. “Restaurants, pubs and cafés were most able to approach pre-Corona levels in terms of staff,” the statisticians found. Here the number of employees shrank by 4.1 percent. The catering industry is suffering from the loss of purchasing power of its customers and the fact that many employees have moved to other industries due to repeated closures during the Corona crisis.
“Earning opportunities also play a role in the effort to fill the shortage of staff,” says the statistics office. Employees in the entire hospitality industry, which includes restaurants, receive gross hourly earnings below the low wage threshold more often than in any other industry. In October 2022, this applied to half of the employment relationships in this industry, but only 15.2 percent in the economy as a whole. At this point in time, the low wage limit was 12.76 euros gross per hour. The loss of sales in the catering industry is also significant compared to pre-Corona levels. In September 2023, the industry had 12.6 percent less in its coffers than four years earlier. “Anyone who sets up a catering company generally finds it a little more difficult to survive in the market in the long term than in other sectors,” emphasized the statisticians. “This was also true before the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic.”
Of the newly founded catering companies in Germany, the majority survive the first year, but only around a third survive the first five years. In 2021, around 179,200 companies in the catering industry generated sales of 50.1 billion euros. Restaurants, snack bars and cafés accounted for the largest share of this at 37.4 billion euros.
The industry fears losses because the old VAT rate of 19 percent for food in restaurants and pubs will apply again from January. Due to the serious consequences of the Corona crisis for the industry, the then ruling grand coalition initially reduced VAT to seven percent for one year on July 1, 2020. This was later extended, but is now set to expire.