Dear energy, canteens at risk (with over a thousand SMEs) – Corriere.it

Electricity, gas and raw materials crush collective catering and put meals in schools, hospitals and health and safety at risk. the alarm launched with the slogan ‘Empty plate, #unpastocheconta, launched by the Collective Catering and Nutrition Observatory also in the national press. Essential services such as school, company and RSA canteens risk disappearing. The canteen sector is also facing a difficult period. Mainly due to the rise in the cost of electricity and gas bills. According to the latest surveys by the Oricon Observatory, collective catering companies today spend 220 million euros more on electricity than in 2020, 126 million more on gas. Also on the food raw materials front there was an increase equal to 24% compared to 2021. Unsustainable increases for the sector if we do not intervene on prices and on the renegotiation of contracts. Without a timely intervention by the Government, companies risk by the end of the year no longer being able to guarantee an essential service for families such as school canteens, reports Carlo Scarsciotti, Oricon president who is convinced that first of all the price of individual meals in the school canteens which remained at 4.5 euros (excluding VAT), a very small figure. Although we must not forget that the pandemic has widened the poverty groups, so much so that, for example, there are over 12 thousand families who have debts towards Milano Restauration (the company that manages the distribution of meals in the Lombard capital), prices, according to Scarsciotti, will have to be revised by at least 10% due to the sharp increase in the costs of foodstuffs and especially of organic products that are now also sold at twice the rate.

Increases in raw materials, transportation and materials

The surge in energy bills, together with the increases in raw materials, transport and packaging materials, are suffocating the collective catering sector which, an almost unique case in the sector of essential public services, cannot – by law – distribute the increase costs on the final price of the contracted service. Up to now, companies in the canteen sector have absorbed the increases in supply prices, but this has had a dramatic impact on the gross operating margin, which is already narrow and still suffering from the pandemic that has destroyed significant market shares. The situation is no longer sustainable: according to our analyzes, for many catering companies, especially SMEs, the exit from the market by the end of the year is an option that is closer, because revenues are no longer able to cover production costs. Thousands of jobs are at risk, as well as the provision of essential services such as school canteens, adds Scarsciotti. Therefore on an overall level between 2021 and 2022 the incidence of the three items (electricity, gas and raw materials) in collective catering increased overall from 36% to 52% of the total costs incurred. An estimate that does not include the cost of transport and that of materials for food packaging, where there is an increase in the price of plastic of 70% on an annual basis, of 40% for cardboard for food purposes and 30% for glass. It is also necessary to consider the difficulty in finding some foods due to the weather criticality that characterized the past months and the lack of correlation between the planning of the primary supply chain and the requests of the companies of the collective: some companies have complained about the total absence of organic poultry during the 2021-2022 school year and exponential increases in available foods (+ 24% organic pasta, + 31% for vegetables, + 15% for dairy products, just to give an example).

The demands of the sector

And what are the main requests coming from the sector? First of all, a mandatory price revision regime in the event of particular conditions such as price increases that are occurring that were not foreseeable at the time of the offer. An increase which, however, should not fall on families. It is also necessary that a ‘standard tender’ be prepared which indicates an appropriate auction base, that is to say a price of the service adequate to the basic requests. Among the needs there is also the use of the concession institution for the assignment of school meals only in cases in which the competent bodies provide coverage and solutions for the solvency problems of families in conditions of poverty.