A clear and original offering, high-quality service and digital management: the formula for resilient restaurants

Against a backdrop of a consumer spending crisis, the catering sector appears – despite all the difficulties and uncertainties involved – to be holding its own. There is no shortage of negative factors, with inflation affecting both consumers – who are seeing their purchasing power eroded – and business owners, who are struggling not to pass on rising costs to prices and who, seeing their margins plummet, are often forced to close. However, eating out – which has now become a much more common part of daily life than in the past – seems to be affected less than one might expect by Italians’ spending cuts.

If according to Istat, 30 per cent of households report having cut back on food spending compared with the previous year, reducing the quantity and/or quality of the products purchased, analyses by Tradelab suggest that out-of-home consumption for this year remains broadly stable at 102 billion euros (compared to 85 billion in the pre-Covid period), though this is mainly driven by tourism (both international and domestic) and shows a polarisation between the lower-middle segment (in decline) and the upper-middle segment (growing).

Competition is fierce, and a business can only outperform its rivals through good service, a clear and distinctive offering, and optimal management. This is precisely what, for example, restaurant chains are doing; although they are also facing a slowdown in growth, they are still managing to achieve above-average performance. According to Deloitte data, by 2025, turnover in the casual dining and fast-food sectors in Italia had grown by 6 per cent compared with 0.4 per cent for traditional ‘full-service’ restaurants (before inflation).

A prime vantage point for observing developments in the restaurant industry comes from TheFork, Europe’s leading online restaurant booking platform, which has just presented its awards to the establishments most highly rated by the platform’s users, based on a selection made by a panel of leading chefs and industry experts.

“The hospitality sector, like other sectors, is facing the challenge of inflation, which is affecting consumer spending and driving up costs for restaurants themselves. At the same time, it remains difficult to attract and retain staff. Despite this,” comments Carlo Carollo, Italia country manager at TheFork, “booking trends are holding up well. According to a study we commissioned from Kantar in April, 86 per cent of Italians go to a restaurant at least once a month, in line with previous findings and the rest of Europe. On the other hand, there have been changes in customer expectations. Indeed, as consumers have to spend more, they not only want to eat well but also expect a high standard of service, a pleasant and memorable atmosphere, and dishes they wouldn’t prepare at home. In other words, they expect restaurants to have a clear identity and efficient management. With this in mind, we have enhanced our TheFork Manager in recent years specifically to help our partner restaurateurs access the tools and information that enable them to organise their dining area and service more effectively, communicate easily with customers, manage their prices dynamically, compare their business with that of competitors in the area, manage feedback from diners and much more’.