Inflation. This economic phenomenon that we all know from suffering and media coverage has an unknown congestion in the humble hospitality industry. But every day all media glorify the excellence of the culinary creations of the Minority Restaurants who escape this daily struggle with the same balance that our mothers and grandmothers applied when putting together the daily family diet.
Just the vast majority modest restoration (which in turn creates most of the direct jobs) faces this battle. To maintain a decent service and a quality price offer that customers can pay in proportion to their income, with very small margins and not a little imagination. And without giving up industrial food. This, without engaging in demagogic controversies, is not healthy at all.
This compendium of balance, austerity and quality is called the daily menu and feeds hundreds of thousands of Spaniards and foreigners every day.
Because the average inflation for the period 2021 to 2023 has reached, more precisely, 14.1%, which mainly affects consumer and energy products, which have a strong impact on the artisanal industry of the food staff. For some products (e.g. AVOE oil), this average shoots up to 100% in unacceptable speculative boasts because the price of the product has been increased due to climatic circumstances when the 2023-2024 harvest has not yet occurred. and that means change the price of things which, according to experts in the field (there are thousands of commentators in incomprehensible silence on this topic), is a crime.
Well, the humble hospitality industry has generally increased its offer of daily menus by 1 or 2 euros to mitigate and absorb these intolerable effects and has rearranged its costs so as not to affect its value for money offer to customers, in order to to ensure durability. and survival of the company. This generally means that the increase in the menu price does not exceed 4.5 or 5%. That’s almost a third of average inflation over the same period. Undoubtedly for their own benefit, but also for the demand of the population, whose income does not allow excessive consumer spending.
Thousands of humble hospitality businesses battle inflation every day without rest or recognition
Because this compendium of balance, economy and quality is called Today’s menu and feeds hundreds of thousands of Spaniards and foreigners every day, thereby building a permanent dam against inflation. Sometimes speculative for consumer goods. These are the daily menus between 14 and 18 euros, which appear daily on all boards in these restaurants. Earned Three stars for the effort, perseverance and professional austerity that no one grants them by paying the same or more taxes than the greats of Spain. Without interns who work for free and without social guarantees.
These establishments are also those that are not reflected in all types of scripted products in television or film formats, are sometimes manipulated and face unfair competition from interlopers to the detriment of the rest modest ovens who are subjected to the merciless pressure of social networks, and a number of spontaneous gourmet neo-critics who brazenly express their opinion on what suits their exclusive personal taste, poorly educated and informed.
Too many things hang on these lines. That they would bore the reader with it. But emphasizing that thousands of humble hospitality businesses battle inflation every day without rest or recognition seems a necessary truism. What should be known and appreciated, perhaps because that is what it really is Haute cuisine with products that fly at ground level. The one we humans step on. And enough of so much media fraud about a restaurant that only a few people know about… because they can’t afford it. Apart from food journalists and “influencers” who usually don’t pay either.
