Subject to abstruse regulation conditions, these businesses disappear year after year in France.
Our small businesses disappear. This is the alarming observation of the Macronist deputy Guillaume Kasbarian: “The devitalization of rural areas has passed the number of cafes and bistros from 200,000 in 1960 to 38,800 in 2023”. In total, more than 150,000 establishments have closed in the space of 63 years. A height for these places to live together since September 2024 in the French intangible heritage.
This registration is the result of six years of mobilization led by The association of bistros and cafes of Francechaired by Alain Fontaine, chef of the restaurant Le Mesuret in Paris. Their next target is UNESCO, which manages the intangible heritage of humanity. For years, the restaurateur has alert to the disappearance of these businesses. “In thirty years, the number of catering establishments has not dropped, while the number of bistros, if. They represented 50% of the Parisian catering against 14% today,” he deplores World.
But how to explain this significant drop? Pierre Boisard, sociologist and author of Bistrot’s life, lists three incriminating factors :: The decrease in the number of workers (who had coffee cultivation), competition from fast food, which shade old establishments, and a more general desertification phenomenon.
For Guillaume Kasbarian, however, there is a fourth element. “Administrative regulations were able to contribute to the phenomenon by making License Transfers IV very difficult or by weighing heavy constraints for the opening of new flows,” writes the former Minister of Public Service in the explanatory motives for his bill in favor of the return of bistros in small municipalities.
The text, aimed at simplifying the opening of drinking flow rates in municipalities with less than 3,500 inhabitants, was adopted on Wednesday March 5 in committee. It consists in facilitating the obtaining of new licenses IV, an authorization allowing the sale of strong alcohols, a rate of more than 18 °. The procedure would be on declaration to the mayor.
For the moment, an establishment is entitled to obtain it, after prefectural authorization, only if another establishment in the department puts the key under the door. But you still have to have the means to buy this license. Its price can indeed reach several tens of thousands of euros, including in rural areas. If Guillaume Kasbarian does not deny the public health issues relating to his proposal – alcohol is responsible for 41,000 deaths per year – the deputy highlights the role of regulating managers, which legally exercises “a responsibility delegated by the state of supervision of consumption”.