After two years in normal. Restaurants are recovering from the pandemic, two hundred is paid for lunch in Prague
Full of Prague restaurants and among them visitors who are happy to pay extra. Reservations are often required during lunchtime. Czech gastronomy seems to have the worst behind it. However, this does not apply to small towns and certainly not to a village.
This is a summary of the development of gastronomy according to current data from the Dotykačka system. It shows that last year’s totals in gastronomy jumped on average by forty percent compared to 2021.
Domestic restaurateurs have finally had a fairly normal year. And the growth in sales doesn’t seem to have prevented other challenges like inflation and skyrocketing energy costs.
“People, especially in Prague and big cities, still have good purchasing power and don’t save so much on food. Customers do not complain about restaurant prices or show it. But tolerance has hit an imaginary ceiling and further increases will be a problem,” says Luboš Kastner, a consultant and representative of gastronomes in the Association of Small and Medium Enterprises and Entrepreneurs of the Czech Republic.
“The prices are now so high that we can no longer afford another big increase, people perceive it sensitively,” he adds.
Two hundred for lunch in Prague
However, according to Kastner, the people of Prague are not leaving their favorite establishments alone. They use restaurants a lot during the week for lunch and are willing to pay around two hundred for a meal without a drink.
According to him, however, two hundred crowns is an imaginary psychological price limit in Prague. According to him, even in the capital, people are trying to save money by cooking meals for work at home.
However, not every day, but especially on weekends, when they are chasing it. “We call it Box Monday, because on Mondays we observe a drop in attendance over lunch,” adds Kastner.
A quarter of the price
Even customers outside of Prague have to deal with price increases. In nine out of fourteen regions, prices rose by roughly one to a quarter (19-24 percent) from the beginning of 2021 to the end of last year. The remaining regions increased prices by up to thirty percent.
“The Olomouc region was the only area where prices rose only minimally. There, prices have risen by only thirteen percent since the beginning of 2021, which is ten percentage points behind the national average,” Menclík explains.
But the price hike helped restaurants get back on their feet. Among the regions, the Karlovy Vary and Moravian-Silesian regions improved the most in terms of sales last year, which both achieved a 52 percent increase. However, most other Moravian regions also achieved above-average values (over 45 percent), and on top of that, the Liberec Region and the capital city of Prague.
On the contrary, the lowest, by only 26 percent, is found in the Central Bohemian Region, where support for enterprises has increased.
“In the Central Bohemia region, however, it may be lower due to the fact that the businesses there were among the most prosperous during the entire pandemic. The change compared to the most critical period was therefore not as pronounced as in the regions that were hit hardest by the pandemic measures. This is the case in the aforementioned Karlovy Vary Region,” explains Petr Menclík, director of Dotykačka, whose cash register system is used by the largest number of domestic gastronomic establishments and operates more than sixteen thousand cash registers across the Czech Republic.
Nevertheless, people go to restaurants mainly in big cities, restaurateurs have a difficult time in smaller ones. And in the villages they even lose. So it can be said that the coronavirus and the subsequent increase in prices have mostly wiped out small businesses in small towns and villages.
“Prague is such an island, entrepreneurs are doing well here and some are even thinking about opening another establishment. On the other hand, the situation in the villages is desperate. Basically, the classic Czech pub is slowly disappearing. Such businesses fail,” adds Kastner.
Autumn 2022 – a celebration of life
Another phenomenon emerges from the Dotykačka data. Despite the price increase, people like to have fun, especially in the evening. With the onset of autumn 2022, the party season was in full swing, and the ones in October even exceeded those in September on average. According to Kastner, the reason was uncertainty about what was to come.
“Autumn and the onset of winter have become a celebration of life. Nobody knew if another wave of covid would come, and even more so, people went out to have fun until the evening hours,” summarizes Kastner. The renaissance of nightlife is also confirmed by official data.
Compared to the pandemic, and even the pre-pandemic period, they increased especially in night businesses – from bars to pubs to various bowling or billiard establishments. The largest increase was in cocktail bars, where it increased even by 97 percent.
According to Kastner, Czech gastronomy has the worst behind it and the best ahead. According to him, the pandemic cleansed the market and mainly quality businesses survived. However, according to his estimates, customers must prepare for another wave of price increases in the spring. “It won’t be so dramatic, I estimate a five to ten percent increase in prices,” he concludes.