Pressure on the cookers: Sky-high costs mean London’s restaurants are fighting for their lives

Michel Roux is insisting he is an optimistic sort, even as a note of desolation begins to sound in his sentences. ‘I’m a very positive person and always have been,’ he says. ‘But lately it’s been getting harder and harder.’ A long sigh.

In one form or another, it’s a sentence — sigh included — that is being uttered in kitchens across the capital. ‘You’ll usually hear me looking to the positives when it comes to business and the economy,’ is Bentley’s owner Richard Corrigan’s riff on it. ‘But we’re heading into uncertainty like we’ve never known before. It’s utterly terrifying.’

Given Corrigan is better known for a kind of bullishness — in 2008 he opened Corrigan’s Mayfair not in spite of the recession but because of the opportunity he saw in it — to hear the customarily ebullient Irishman sounding melancholic is a sobering thing. Post-pandemic, the hospitality industry might have expected an easier time, especially with Christmas coming. Not so. David Moore, who has run Fitzrovia’s Pied à Terre for more than three decades, is another characteristically cheery sort sounding down on his luck. ‘I’ve never seen a harder time for the industry — I’ve never seen so many different issues at once.

‘We’ve all heard that phrase “it’s the perfect storm” so many times in the past but to be quite honest, it wasn’t then. But now it feels more apposite than ever.’

Of course Covid has its hangovers — many businesses are weighed down with heavy debts and promises — while staff remain scarce, which most operators characterise as a direct consequence of Brexit. The cost-of-living crisis, too, comes in many colours: energy costs barely tempered by the cap — bills tripling is typical — increased supplier costs, reduced customer spending. There are rail strikes, a recession forecast. There is Russia and its strange knock-ons (take the cost of CO2, up by 1,000 per cent for some breweries). The Budget, which most took to be largely indifferent to the industry, has done little to calm tempers or steady nerves. The consequence is a kind of widespread weariness, a jaded fatigue.

The last major crisis of this kind, the 2008 recession, was different, says Roux. ‘It was an economic crash that you could see an end to — but this one, you don’t know how it’s going to end or when.’

Moore agrees. ‘In 2008, if I wanted a kitchen porter, I’d press a button and one would arrive in 30 minutes, as long as they had an EU passport,’ he says. Of all the facets, a lack of workers might be hitting hardest. ‘The staffing situation is utterly chaotic,’ says Akoko’s Aji Akokomi simply. ‘At Gavroche we’ve been shut now for lunch since, what, May 2021?’ adds Roux. ‘It’s not financially viable and I’m lacking maybe 12 to 16 members of staff to make it work.’

As is well-documented by now, these staff would typically come from across the European Union. ‘The Government wants the growth, but not migration,’ says Moore, baffled. He says he’s being forced to pay the sponsorship costs to get staff in from overseas, ‘which costs me £600 an application, whether we take them on or not’.

His bafflement is widely shared. ‘On those staff there would be national insurance and income tax that they’re contributing,’ says Roux. ‘If I have more staff, I’d be able to open more — I’d be turning over more, contributing more, paying more duty. It’s the same across the board — the Government is losing out. I know for a fact that if freedom of movement was reinstated or they set up an easier visa route tomorrow, I could fill those [staff] spaces within a week.’

Christmas time is normally a cure no matter how poisonous a year may have been, but 2022 is looking to be a quiet one. Reports of a recent survey by UKHospitality put vacancy rates across the board at 17 per cent, which means places will be emptier than they are now. Consumers and businesses both have less to spend, while strikes aren’t helping: it is forecast, again by UKHospitality, that each rail strike will cost the industry £1.5 billion, ‘similar to the level of disruption caused by the Omicron Covid-19 variant last year.