Food mania, indigestible binge: expenses and debts bend the chains. From 'fast' places to fusion windows: the season of closures has begun

Milan – The gourmet hamburger and poke fashion, with fast-food restaurants of the typical Hawaiian dish that have invaded the streets of Milan and then the provinces of Lombardy until they saturated the market. Quality sandwiches , “ fish bars ”, dishes imported from the other side of the globe or typical street food from the Italian regions replicated on a large scale. Chains that open, become successful, and sometimes end up in the vortex of crisis and debt. The “most irreverent fast-food in the world” Burgez , placed in judicial liquidation by the bankruptcy court of Milan , is the last on the list, in a profitable but also difficult place like Milan, due to its costs and high competition. Chains like Vapore Italiano srl, created by Milanese Vanni Bombonato, with his food stores “That's Vapore ”, have ended up in crisis . The Sun Tzu group , created in 2015 by Edoardo Maggiori, which owns 12 restaurants in Milan including Filetteria Italiana , a chain specialising in meat, and the fusion cuisine brands Magnaki and El Tacomaki, is also in liquidation.

Last year, the 12-year history of the Panini Durini lunch bar chain, born from an idea by Stefano Saturinino, came to an end , closing the premises from one day to the next and leaving the employees without wages, forced to resign. Thanks to a dispute by Filcams Cgil, most of the wages were recovered. “Looking at working conditions, it is a problematic sector,” explains Margherita Tonolini , a Milanese union representative for Filcams who follows the sector. “Most of the contracts are part-time, 20 hours a week, which translates into salaries of less than a thousand euros a month.”

Salaries that are impossible to live on , not only in Milan but also in the hinterland and provinces of Lombardy. “Most of the disputes are linked precisely to working hours and the extreme flexibility required by companies – he continues – to the tasks performed, not in line with the contractual framework, to an abuse and irregular use of apprenticeship contracts. The signs of the crisis are always the same: staff are starting to be cut, perhaps pushing employees to also take care of cleaning, salaries start to arrive late or only in part”. Chains that grow on the wave of food trends, expand by placing their flags in the restaurant game of risk and launching marketing campaigns, deflate when debts accumulate and new competitors enter the market.

A Milanese square , among other things, where the costs to rent a space are sky-high, abandoned even by food delivery platforms like Uber Eats, which work in symbiosis with restaurant chains. In Milan, therefore, a game for rights is also being played. On May 17 , Mc Donald's workers took to the streets, in front of the Duomo, to ask for "an integrative contract that recognizes dignity and rights ." An integrative contract obtained, last January, by the employees of the Roadhouse chain, after a tug of war and a long union negotiation.

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