At Le Bouillon Chartier in Paris, the recipe for a perfect beef Bourguignon beef, carrots, wine, butter and “scallops”, a small macaroni-shaped pasta, includes. It is cooked for at least three hours. And it must be affordable, so the price cannot be more than 10 euros per dish.
Since 1896, Belle Epoque -Eetcafe has been the destination of the Parisian for cheap French dishes. It is a noisy canteen with meals that provide energy for the day, where someone can eat less on a livable wage than what they earn within an hour.
But rarely in the legendary history of Bouillon Chartier it was just as difficult to keep costs under control as today.
The elements that go into his beef Bourguignon, including electricity for the restaurant, as well as wages for the bustling staff of Servers and Koks, are 30 to 45 percent higher than five years ago, said Christophe Joulie, the owner of the restaurant. And for one Stable price for the best -selling dish of Bouillon Chartier (which costs around $ 10.80), he has cut up to 20 percent in the margins of his family business.
“The price of everything that has essentially occurred,” said Mr Joulie on a recent weekday in the Eetcafe in the ninth district of Paris, one of the three broth Chartier locations in the city. A line almost two blocks long was formed at 11.30 am, when the doors swing open for the lunch public. “But our struggle is to always offer a decent meal at a considerable price.”
The challenges with which Mr Joulie is confronted reflect the broader impact of sticky inflation throughout Europe. Inflation in the euro area climbed to 2.4 percent in February after the cooling of last year. The European Central Bank reduced interest rates for the sixth consecutive time on Thursday, but is confronted with an uncertain path forward as an increase in military expenditures and possible rates, the horizon are obscuring.
Inflation has fallen from a record of 10 percent after the Russian invasion of Ukraine and Pandemic Lockdowns. Prices for energy, meat and dairy products, and even glassware and tablecloths, do not rise that fast. But they are still stubborn higher than before inflation outbreak.
Higher prices also have other companies in Europe, which pushes factories and energy-intensive trade, including restaurants, to the outskirts. In houses throughout the country, people who try to put food on the table believe that the price of their supermarket basket is only somewhat baptized.
In the Bouillon Chartier, those forces are marbled by the beef Bourguignon, the most emblematic dish in France: the total costs that it is almost to double since the pandemic, said Mr Joulie.
The price of beef he orders from old suppliers has risen triple, driven by higher feeding and fertilizers, energy to lead the slaughterhouses and gas for tractors and transport.
Other ingredients have fallen in price, but remain high, according to Insee, the French Statistics Agency.
Mr Joulie's electricity bill for his restaurants rose to € 1.5 million per year, from € 500,000 three years ago; Last year he was able to negotiate a lower contract, but the losses did not make up for that. The wages, which are about 40 percent of the price of a beef Bourguignon, have risen by 15 to 20 percent during that period because employees demanded higher salaries to keep pace with inflation.
“Every morning I go to my purchasing director to find out what we can buy,” said Mr. Jolie. “It's like playing the stock market.”
Le Bouillon Chartier started as a popular canteen, made famous more than a century ago in Paris by the Chartier brothers, who offered bouillon or broth and sturdy dishes to workers. In the end, employees of Witte Borden were attracted, together with tourists, who nowadays flowed into larger numbers after the restaurant appeared in the Netflix show “Emily in Paris”.
In an era of unyielding inflation, the broth, such as the eateries as it is known, has become a culinary refuge of the costs of living crisis that the expenditure of the average French citizen has cut. The most expensive item on the menu is a steak fries for € 13.50, a third to half a cheaper than it would be in bistros and restaurants. In recent years, almost a dozen cheap copycat broths have been opened in Paris, which attracts crowds.
But the popularity of Bouillon Chartier has not always been strong. It ruled the cheap Eetscène from Paris to the mid -2000s, when the eating habits changed, and more people attracted fast food, Mr Joulie said. It was about to bankruptcy when his father, a restaurant owner who started in the 1970s as a waiter in French bistros, came in with his son to make it. Together they run Groupe Joulie, a company that also contains 12 elegant Parisian bistros.
The duo ran the restaurant in the ninth district, now a historic monument, in which the original design of Art Nouveau Globe chandeliers, wooden paneling and red control remained tablecloths. Huge mirrors hung on patinated walls inspired Balthazar, the bustling French restaurant in New York City.
To keep prices low, Mr. Joulie with volume work. He only orders 1.5 tonnes of beef per week for the Bourguignon trench in the three broths, which serve more than 4,000 dinners a day. Customers spend an average of € 20 per ticket.
If prices rise too much, he will drop some items from the menu. For example, the popular duck confit was temporarily affected if he could not retain the price at € 12.50. And at the beginning of January Mr Joulie was forced to remove the beef Bourguignon for a week due to a jump in the prices of beef. He has held the costs of the court for four years for € 10.
He has usually chosen to remove the financial hit from the margins from his company. “We can do that because we are a family business, not mandatory for the stock market or investors,” he said.
“It has worked so far,” he added, gesturing to the Falanx of Diners who are sitting elbow to elbow in the immense hall, decorated with a giant fresco made by the painter Germont in 1929 to pay his arrears tab. Twenty waiters in black vests and white aprons turned around tables, took orders and zipped to the kitchen. Glass clamped and silverware tapped on white plates decorated with the Chartier emblem, placed on top of a paper table cover where the waiters wrote the bill with a ballpoint pen.
Despite the buzz, Mr. said Joulie that the scourge of inflation for every restaurant under the surface simmered. Traffic in his eateries, and in restaurants and bistros in France, delayed after a post-pandemic increase. At the end of 2023, persistent high prices for energy and food had deepened a crisis for the costs of life; Even in the broth, customers ordered less.
Ali Belcacem and his friend, old regulars, polished of a € 3.20 chocolate mousse after eating beef Bourguignon and Andouillette, or a Trepe sausage, wash everything with a glass house red wine. “We don't eat as much as before,” said Mr. Belcacem. The men, pensioners who live in the neighborhood, were on a fixed income and have been financially pressed in the last year and a half, especially in the past year and a half, due to stubbornly high bills for electricity and food, as well as clothing and gas.
“If they say that inflation has landed, that is not the reality,” said Mr. Belcacem. “Our shopping basket for some items has risen by 40 percent.” They treated themselves to Chartier on an afternoon meal, because it was sturdy and economic.
Mr Joulie scanned the dining room and looked at Mr. Belcacem while he paid his account.
“High prices hurt many people,” Joulie said. “Now more than ever, it is important to keep things affordable.”
