Massimo Bottura, board member and vice-president of the Le Soste Association, three Michelin stars, UN Ambassador against food waste, entrepreneur and man of culture, has his say. He does so by writing an open letter to Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte. An elegant, concrete and enlightening reflection on the importance of the role of the restaurateur.
“I ask myself: who are we? I believe that today a restaurant in Italy is worth a Renaissance workshop: we make culture, we are ambassadors of agriculture, we are the engine of gastronomic tourism, we train, and now we have started a "humanistic" culinary revolution that involves the social . Hospitality and catering, art and architecture, design and light are the cornerstones of our identity”.
Bottura emphasizes the important contribution that a restaurateur can make to his local area: “In the last five years in Modena, thanks to a micro-restaurant like the Osteria Francescana, more than 80 b&bs have sprung up. Gastronomic tourism was born where thousands of families, couples and friends spend two or three days traveling around Emilia to discover and celebrate the territories and their heroes: farmers, cheese makers, artisans and fishermen.
Faced with the early closure of bars and restaurants at 18.00 which effectively eliminates the evening service, and the concrete lack of income that will fall back on the entire agri-food sector, Bottura complains that "few today have liquidity, indeed, today more than we never feel alone.
We closed in March and you asked us to reopen after three months respecting the rules. We did. Many have gone into debt to get in order: masks, gels, temperature scanners, oximeters, air sanitization, tests for all the staff, alternating entrances, spaced tables.
Hence the urgent call to political attention towards one of Italy's major industries, divided into five clear and clear-cut points that arrive as a memorandum after a snapshot of the current state of Italian food and wine.
“We need a signal that restores our confidence. Now we risk depression. Now we need courage and stimuli. To find the desire to continue and not feel alone.
Specifically, we need:
Of the evening closing at least at 23.00
Of liquidity in parameter to the turnovers.
Of the redundancy fund at least until the stabilization of European tourism.
Of the 2021 de-contribution given that for 2020 we have already complied in full.
Of the lowering of the VAT rate to 4% for next year.
The conclusion of the letter brings to mind:
“Politics is made of courage and dreams. / It is similar to poetry / It is made of imagination and the future / Politics must make the invisible visible.”
