Many French people complain that restaurants have become too expensive, but Celine Viale tells me restaurant prices increased less than their costs from mid-2024 to mid-2025. However, a survey carried out over a longer period by Gira, a consultancy firm that advises owners, suppliers and investors in the restaurant sector tells a different story.

"Between the end of 2022 when inflation really jumped and mid-2024 when it stopped rising but remained at a very high level, raw material costs for restaurant owners rose 16% on average," says Gira's founder and chief executive Bernard Boutboul. "That's enormous."

"Some restaurant owners were reasonable and put prices up by 9% to 10%. Some didn't put up their prices at all, and that's a bit dangerous because that can wipe out your profit margin.

"But many put their prices up by more than 20%. In fact, the national average restaurant price increase for that period was 23%."

Boutboul adds that the timing could not have been worse as it came when French people were struggling with much higher prices for their groceries and their energy bills. "So the cost of the particularly French pleasure of eating in a restaurant suddenly became prohibitive for many people.

"We do a lot of customer surveys, and people often complain they can no longer find a restaurant where the dessert is under €9. Or that they are charged €10 for a half-bottle of mineral water! It's just much too much!

"France now has, in my opinion, restaurants that are much too expensive for French people."

Tastes have changed too. "We have, in France and all over the world, a new generation of consumers who love restaurants, but they don't go to the same places as their parents, let alone their grandparents," notes Boutboul.

"They don't want to eat the same things, they don't want to structure their meals in the same way, they don't have the same notion of value for money.

"They are more interested in buying an experience than the food as such. The place, the staff, the dishes: it all needs to be 'instagramable'. So, we're at a turning point."

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Some have managed to negotiate the turning brilliantly. Boutboul cites one new restaurant chain that has flourished quickly, La Nouvelle Garde, which aims to offer a cheaper and healthier version of the traditional brasserie.

But the huge, dense network of little restaurants that used to define this country at mealtimes is disappearing fast. If things keep going the way they have, the future, says Céline Viale, is bleak.

"It would be a shame if the same thing happens to the restaurant business as happened to fashion retailing, where the independents disappear and all that's left in the city centres are the big brands, the big chain stores," she says.

"I'm afraid we'll end up with a two-tier system with some eating in a few very expensive gastronomic restaurants, while the rest will eat badly, or at home."

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Fin de Bistro - The fall of the French restaurant