Feast. Even limiting ourselves to inner Lille, there are countless openings of stalls offering food. Whether traditional restaurants or fast-food type establishments, there are everywhere, for all tastes and for all budgets, so much so that the capital of Flanders seems to be transformed into a huge ” food court”. A real treat for food lovers, which perhaps conceals a less appetizing reality.
A quick search, by filtering the main activity codes of companies (APE code) established in Lille, makes it possible to count 1,558 traditional catering establishments and 2,004 fast food establishments. Reported to the population of Lille, this makes approximately 1 restaurant for 65 inhabitants. A pharaonic figure which even astonishes Gérard De Poorter, the president of the Union of Trades and Industries of the Hotel Industry (UMIH). “It seems like a lot to me, even if we see that many establishments have opened recently,” he admits.
Rental prices and profitability
This observation that catering businesses are flourishing in all corners of Lille, the boss of the UMIH is not the only one to do so. “It’s a bit like the law of the series, the catering sector is in a good dynamic despite its difficulties. This should naturally stop when a balance is found, ”explains Romuald Catoire, president of the Lille Trade Federation. But, for him as for the boss of the UMIH, it is not necessarily detrimental to other businesses. “As long as it’s physical commerce that attracts customers, it generates a flow in the city center that benefits everyone,” he says.
But why do we see fast food growing and not other shops? “Today the pressure of rents is such that profitability models must be buoyant. This is even more true when a restaurant has a terrace. This makes it possible to obtain a return per m2 which indirectly lowers the face value of the rent, ”explains the president of the Lille Federation of Commerce.
A room for sale at nearly 16,000 euros per m2
With the soaring prices of commercial real estate in Lille, we come across improbable announcements. A commercial ground floor of 60 m2 is currently on sale for almost a million euros on rue de la Clé, in Old Lille. “The buyer can hope to rent this property for 4,000 euros per month with a return of 5%”, estimates the real estate agency in charge of the sale. “Clearly, at this price, it’s not a haberdashery that will settle there,” laments Romuald Catoire.
In its “Trade and Crafts Strategy 2022-2026”, the city of Lille will try to tackle this problem by installing a trade observatory. “It will be a question, among other things, of defining the appropriate levers in order to meet the ambition of commercial balance”, we explain to the municipality. One of these levers is still utopian: the control of commercial rents. “The high amount of commercial rents threatens the financial balance of small businesses […] and contributes to the degradation of commercial diversity”, assures the city. But that would require a law and it is not in the government’s plans.