Café society's no longer their cup of coffee

Published on Saturday 29 November 2008 18:51

NATHALIE Guerin opened Le Festi'Val bar and café two years ago full of high hopes, after working at the main competition in the Burgundy town of Saulieu, the Café du Nord. But business started to tail off after the summer and is now "in free fall".

"Now there's no one," she said, standing in a sombre room with one young man playing a video game by an unused pool table. "People fear the future, and now with the banking crisis, they are even more afraid," the 35-year-old said, close to tears. "They buy a bottle at the supermarket and they drink it at home."

Guerin's plight is being replicated all over France as traditional cafs and bars suffer and even close, hit by changing attitudes, habits and now a poor economic climate. In 1960, France had 200,000 cafs, said Bernard Quartier, president of the National Federation of Cafs, Brasseries and Discotheques. Now it has fewer than 41,500, with an average of two closing every day.

The number of bankruptcies filed by caf bars in the first six months of 2008 rose by 56% over the same period a year ago, according to a study by Euler Hermes SFAC, a large credit insurance company. No reliable figures are available for the latter part of this year, when the global financial crisis struck.

"The bar of a caf is the parliament of the people," as Honor de Balzac wrote, but it is being less frequently visited these days, especially by the young.

Not only are the French spending less, and drinking less, cutting down on the intensity and quality of the debates, but on January 1, after much huffing and puffing, France extended its smoking ban to bars, cafs and restaurants.

Marco Mayeux, 42, the bartender of Le Relais, a Paris caf in the 18th Arrondissement, said the ban alone had cut his coffee and bar business by 20%.

"A place like mine doesn't appeal to everyone," he said. "There is a coffee-at-the-counter feel that isn't attractive any more."

Guerin is trying to sell her caf, but has had only one nibble in this lovely town of about 3,000 people.

Jean-Louis Humbert is the district director of the Federation of Cafs, Brasseries and Discotheques, and he is blunt about Guerin's chances. "It's finished for her," he said. "No one wants to buy it. The banks don't want to lend her any more money, and it will end up in liquidation."

Daniel Perrey, 57, owner of the Caf du Crucifix in Crimolois, blamed social change, saying: "Sadly, it is the end to a way of life. The culture is changing, and we feel it."

People are drinking less, smoking less and spending less, and even those who drink are wary of the local police, who now hover near the bar, especially at night, to test the sobriety of drivers. President Nicolas Sarkozy has asked the police to crack down on drunken drivers.

"Workers don't take taxis," Perrey said, stroking his lavish moustache and laughing. He gleefully showed photos of a small car wrapped around a tree in his parking lot, after an accident, saying: "They had to call the firemen to get them out!"

The caf, he said, is a kind of public living room, especially in small towns and cities, and it is suffering as habits and laws change.

"We need the caf to have an equilibrium between the village and the world outside," Perrey said. "Without the caf, you lose the conviviality. You lose your mates. Business agreements are made behind the zinc of the bar."