Lyon (AFP)

Restaurants can reopen on June 2 in green areas. But will the clientele be there? The chefs fear the next world and many have chosen to continue the take-away sale, which started during their confinement.

In Lyon, the capital of gastronomy, or on the shores of Lake Annecy, the biggest tables anticipate difficult tomorrows, obscured by fear of the virus and the distancing imposed in the rooms.

"The coming months will be complicated. This is why, even when reopened, we will diversify our offers", explains to AFP Gaëtan Gentil, starred chef at the Prairial restaurant, in the heart of Lyon.

"We were the first in Lyon to get into take-out during confinement. A success: some 80 menus each Wednesday and Saturday".

Two - his wife Céline and him - against nine employees usually. "We are also preparing around thirty" traveling baskets ", intended for a grocery truck.

The chef does not hide his concern: "in the summer, 70% of our customers are tourists ... For the near future, we have no visibility".

Same analysis for Jean Sulpice, doubly starred chef at the Auberge du Père Bise in Talloires-Montmin (Haute-Savoie), on the shores of Lake Annecy.

When "we reopen, we will have heavy operating constraints. We will not find the restaurant before ... before long".

"This is why I intend to maintain my take-out business", so far unprecedented.

"With confinement, we had to reinvent ourselves. And that also makes my kitchen accessible to people who may never cross the door of my establishment," he underlines.

"It's been over a month that I have been offering + starter, main dish + for 36 euros". Nothing to do with the budget for a meal at the Auberge du Père Bise.

"What matters is to continue to create, manipulate the products, maintain the link with local producers, customers and seasonality".

"It also allowed me to have six to eight people full time in the kitchen." The rest of the 70 employees are partially unemployed.

The dishes can be picked up at the Auberge shop but also from merchants. "A catering friend lent me a refrigerated truck for deliveries."

"The summer season is crucial for the restaurant. If we miss it, it will be dramatic," warns Jean Sulpice.

"The takeout will serve as a complement after months of closure. The profession is reorganizing, it has no choice", according to Alexane Roux, whose start-up NoShow has designed a digital ordering solution for takeout for these inexperienced restaurateurs.

- "A before and after Covid" -

"Consumers will want to eat well, but at home, safe. It is a real change in the mode of consumption. There will be a before and after Covid-19," she said.

Floriant Rémont, at the head of three Bistro du Potager restaurants in Lyon, adds: "people will still prefer to taste our dishes at home rather than at the restaurant".

"We started the takeout sale in early May. We will continue after the reopening," he explains.

"It's a new sales channel. We don't offer exactly the same cuisine, but we had to reinvent ourselves. Even if unconfined, restaurants will suffer," notes Floriant Rémont.

For now, only one chef is in the kitchen instead of the usual 45 employees.

"We, during confinement, invented the take-out cap!" Enthuses Joseph Viola.

"This is a new exercise but we will continue after the reopening," says the boss of the three famous Lyon caps Daniel and Denise.

This "boosts creativity, has made it possible to get employees out of unemployment and to prime the pump. In normal times, we have 56 employees. Only six cooks on the track today".

"Some specialties cannot be carried away but the identity of the house remains in the + box +": pies, sweetbread, dumplings….

This Meilleur Ouvrier de France predicts that "the return to the restaurant will be very timid, but people are fed up with cooking. They did it too much during confinement".

© 2020 AFP