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Takeaways and 4pm happy hour: How French restaurants are coping with curfew

In nine French cities long leisurely dinners out are a thing of the past as the curfew obliges everyone to be home by 9pm - so how are restaurants adapting to the new situation?

Published: 19 October 2020 16:44 CEST
Takeaways and 4pm happy hour: How French restaurants are coping with curfew
Restaurants and cafés must abide by strict health rules and a 9pm curfew. Photo: AFP

In France, dinner is traditionally rarely served before 8pm, especially when eaten out. So when the French government declared a 9pm curfew in Paris and eight other cities hard hit by Covid-19 in a bid to curb the spiralling virus rates, restaurants got a new challenge on their plates: How to make up for the loss of the post-9pm profits? 

READ ALSO What you need to know about France's nighttime curfew

Some restaurants have employed what might seem like a radical strategy and now offer early-bird dinner services: come at 6.30, eat at 7pm, leave in time to be home by 9pm. 

While some sniggered about this kind of incentive – “are we going to eat like Americans?” some jokingly asked – some French are determined to save their restaurants – even if that means eating early.

 

 

An online initiative aims to entice more people to go out to eat early, through the Twitter hashtag #J'aimemesrestos (I love my restaurants):

 

Early happy hour(s)

Still, some restaurants reckoned that keeping an evening service was too big a risk.

“Stopping everything at 9pm means having to stop serving food around 8pm maximum,” said Lionel, 46, the owner of the restaurant Le Royal Cadet in the lively 9th arrondissement in Paris.

“We are saying goodbye to half of the turnover,” he told The Local as he smoked his cigarette on the sidewalk in front of his restaurant.

“Even our parents have never experienced something like this, it's unseen since World War II,” he said.

Lionel had taken what he called a “radical decision” and completely stopped doing the evening service. His restaurant now only serves food during lunch time.

“For the rest of the day, I make money on drinks,” he said.

They had brought happy hour forward an hour – it now started at 4pm and lasted until 8pm – he explained, before interrupting himself in order to ask two customers not to forget to write their names and phone numbers on the register. 

New health rules

All French restaurants now have to comply with an updated, stricter health protocol set in place to limit spread within their establishments. These include spreading out tables even more than they had to this summer, which itself has led to a drop in revenue.

Eric, 44, a waiter at a restaurant on the Faubourg Poissonnière street, was pretty gloomy about the future.
 
“We haven’t done anything special for now,” he told The Local. Even though quite a lot of customers were sitting outside sipping coffee and other hot drinks, Eric was resigned. 

“Maybe we will change things later on, but we need a few days to figure out what we’re going to do,” he said.

For now, serving just lunch and skipping the dinner shift seems to be a path several restaurants owners have chosen to go down. After the curfew announcement, Michelin-starred chef Guy Savoy declared that his restaurant now had a new schedule, and would greet its customers “for lunch, for the moment.”

 

Hopes for more early diners

But some restaurants have experience with less rigid food schedules, like those used to serving tourists who get hungry before French dinner time.

“Usually it's tourists who have dinner around 6.30pm, but it’s been a while since we've seen any of them,” said Sophie, 34, a full-time waitress at another restaurant on Rue de Cadet that offers an all-day food service.

Sophie was hoping that the early dinner initiative would become a real trend.

“Unless people decide to have dinner a bit earlier, our evening service will be insignificant,” she said, while writing today's menu on a small blackboard.

As she glanced around the empty restaurant, Sophie said the Covid-19 health crisis had cost them more than tourists.
 
“Even our regular customers don’t come as often as they used to. They come by and say hi, but they don’t eat here anymore because they are scared,” she said.
 
“General panic doesn’t help us at all! So this, plus the 10pm rule, now the curfew… it’s starting to be very complicated,” she said.
 
“Usually we have four chefs who take turns during the weeks, and five staff serving. Now we are just two waiters for the lunch service, and two people in the kitchen. We don’t really have a choice.

“We are beginning to worry about the restaurant’s future, and our profession’s future as well. It’s very uncertain right now, we don’t know where we’re going and how things will evolve.”

Takeaway

For people who just aren't hungry at 6.30pm, many restaurants are also offering a takeaway service.

Delivery drivers are covered by the worker exemption to the curfew, so you can still have food delivered to your home after 9pm, either from one of the traditional takeway providers or your favourite restaurant may be offering to send dinner to your home.

Many restaurants are now advertising a takeaway service, either for collection before 9pm or for delivery after 9pm and this is a nice way to support small businesses that are having a tough time.

 

 

 

By Anne Brivet

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HEALTH

REVEALED: How long does it take to get a doctor’s appointment in France?

When it comes to seeing a doctor in France, you can wait as little as three days to as long as 42 to get an appointment, according to new data. But waiting times depend heavily on the different specialties and where you live.

Published: 23 April 2024 10:07 CEST
REVEALED: How long does it take to get a doctor's appointment in France?

In France, half of all GP appointments are available within three days from the time of booking, according to a study carried out by French booking website Doctolib, using data from its platform.

But patients have to wait longer to see specialist doctors, Docotlib reveals.

Half of all appointments with pediatricians are available in less than a week.

This is followed by dentists and midwives, with an average period of 11 days before the first available appointment. Next, there were psychiatrists (16 days), gynecologists (22 days), and ophthalmologists (25 days).

The Doctolib site allows patients in France to book the next available appointments with most GPs and other medical specialists via its easy to use booking platform.

READ MORE: How to use: French medical website Doctolib

As for the specialties where patients have to wait the longest to see a doctor – dermatologists were second to last – with the average person waiting 36 days. The longest waits were to see cardiologists with patients often having to wait at least 42 days for an appointment.

The medical platform said there was an explanation for the significant differences in wait times: “Dermatology typically requires less urgent care, while most emergencies related to cardiology are referred to the hospital.”

As for physiotherapists, the only para-medical profession looked into within the study, half of all appointments were available within less than six days.

What about video consultations?

The study also looked at the use of the ‘tele-consultation’ (video appointments) tool, and it found that opting for this can significantly speed up appointment wait times.

When using the tele-consultation option, the median wait times for GP and pediatrician appointments dropped to just one day. For midwives, it went down to two days, and then four days for gynecologists, seven days for cardiologists, eight days for dermatologists, and 17 days for psychiatrists.

What about regional disparities?

According to OECD data, France has 32 doctors for every 10,000 people, slightly below the OECD average of 37.

However, they are not equally distributed – about a third of France is considered to be a ‘medical desert’, meaning there is a shortage of doctors . It’s usually used to mean places that have a shortage of GPs or family doctors, which can make it hard for patients to find a regular doctor to register with.

READ MORE: MAP: Where in France has the best access to healthcare?

The Docotlib study noted that their findings do not reveal the disparities between France’s départements, and even within départements themselves.

“About 15 départements across France were found to be in a particularly challenging position regarding wait times in comparison to the rest of the country.

“[These areas] saw median waiting times at least twice as long as the average for at least three of the different specialties,” Doctolib noted.

These départements with the longest wait times were Gers, Saône-et-Loire, Nièvre and Territoire de Belfort, Loiret, Cher, Deux-Sèvres, Ardèche, Eure, Calvados, Manche, Loire-Atlantique and Côtes d’Armor, Pas-de-Calais.

Have things got better or worse?

In terms of whether the situation has improved in recent years, well the data shows there has not been much of change.

Between 2021 and 2023, “the median appointment wait times for different specialties either only slightly changed or did not change at all, which is an encouraging sign given the increase in demand for post-Covid care and the decline in the number of doctors available,” Doctolib wrote.

Doctolib carried out the study using data from appointments made using its platform. It is important to note that medical appointments in France can be secured a number of different ways, with other websites available, as well as the possibility to request appointments in person or on the phone.

As a result, GP consultations made via Doctolib accounted for a little under half of the total GP visits in France.

The platform recorded 87.6 million GP visits in 2023 via its website, out of more than 200 million total GP consultations in France.

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