the O Restaurant is planted in the middle of the commercial area of Lanester (Morbihan), close to a hypermarket, on the other side of the River coastal du Scorff, a few kilometers from Lorient. The car park is full, the sign impeccable and the opening hours still displayed. On the front is thee price (17 euros) of the menu including beef rump steak, as well as unlimited starters and desserts. On can almost imagine the noisy atmosphere, the enticing smell and the gluttons around the buffet.
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However, there is this note on the door which announces the permanent closure of the restaurant. “The Covid crisis, followed by the current economic crisis, will have gotten the better of us”, coldly inform the sign all-you-can-eat buffet. The business closed in June 2022, but almost everything is still there. “I really don’t want to go back, and I don’t want to hear about it”blows the owner, Eric Turpin, 43, four months after going bankrupt.
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He receives franceinfo, Tuesday, October 25, in his suburban house in Pont-Scorff, a village in the lands of “fifteen minutes from the sea”. This is where he has been spending his days since June 3, the day he left the Lorient commercial court and “given the keys to his business”, placed in compulsory liquidation.
Eric Turpin said stop in April. “I realized that I wasn’t going to make it.” he remembers. The Breton held since the end of 2013 a restaurant where you can eat quickly, for cheap – the menus range from 9 and 17 euros. He served there, for a time, up to 400 covers on Saturdays. Like many bosses, he was a victim of Covid-19, changes in habits linked to the health crisis but also to the explosion in the cost of raw materials, and the end of state aid.
Eric Turpin is not the only one to have found himself in this situation. At the beginning of October, franceinfo revealed that nearly 9,000 safeguard, receivership or judicial liquidation procedures had been recorded this summer, i.e. 69% more than in 2021 at the same period. Such rate had not been observed for 25 years.
“Since March 2020, it’s been a mess on the planet. We’ve had the Covid, the confinements, the rise in raw materials, inflation, and now the war in Ukraine.”
Eric Turpin, restaurateurat franceinfo
Originally from Nantes, Eric Turpin has “spent his entire career in the restaurant business” : a BTS in this field, a first experience in gourmet restaurants, before going through the Golden Brioche and entering Casino, in the Paris region at 24 years old. From manager to site director, he climbs the ladder, and also meets his wife. “I did everything at Casino, from the Tour de France to receptions for the UMP”says the one who remembers “going to get raspberries at five o’clock in the morning for Hortefeux’s breakfast at party headquarters”.
When his son was born, Eric Turpin left Paris, heading for the west of France. “I was tired of being paid 2,000 euros a month and making money for companies.” At the end of 2013, the Casino group offered him to take over the cafeteria of the Lanester shopping center on a lease-management basis (he operated it in return for the payment of a fee).
“From the first year, I make money and I even manage to get myself a bonus”, remembers Eric Turpin, who then pays himself 2,800 euros per month. Its cafeteria, “something that turns, not the boui-boui of the corner”, reaches a turnover of one million euros and employs around twenty people. The restaurateur discovers the life of a boss and “behind the scenes, salary and employer charges, Urssaf”.
A first hiccup occurred in 2015. The Casino group wanted to close the cafeteria and offered to become a franchisee. He accepts, moves to premises outside the mall and turns to an all-you-can-eat buffet restaurant. “There, I really invest [il avait déjà investi 10 000 euros fin 2013], and I own everything except the walls. I borrow 500,000 euros from the bank and 40,000 euros from my parents.”
Here again, success is at the rendezvous for Eric Turpin and his wife, who works alongside him. “The turnover rises to 1.2 million euros and the clientele increases by 30%”. Admittedly, the closure of his take-out sale, which deprives him of “250,000 euros per year”the equivalent of its payroll, and the concept of the all-you-can-eat buffet where “margins are falling”, complicate the task. “Between 2016 and 2020, I hardly make any profit but the repayment of my bank loan is advancing”explains the restorer.
A virus then arrives from China. LPrime Minister Edouard Philippe announces on March 14, 2020 the closure of bars, restaurants and other “non-essential” public places. “At the beginning, we say to ourselves that we are going to have three weeks of vacation, and quickly we think of the bills to be paid”, remembers Eric Turpin. At the beginning of April, he obtained a loan guaranteed by the State (PGE) of 150,000 euros, “a breath of fresh air”.
It reopens in June, finds that its turnover has fallen by 35% and “that the concept is no longer in line with what we live”. The Covid-19 epidemic starts again in the fall, France is reconfiguring itself. His restaurant is closing for seven months. While his wife receives a small partial unemployment, he pays himself 1,500 euros per month, “what to pay the rent, eat and pay the bills”, and extends its loan until 2025 (compared to 2022 initially). The State helps him (between 12,000 and 15,000 euros per month).
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The picture darkens a little more in May 2021. Restaurants can once again welcome customers… who do not return. “There, it’s catastrophic, we have 80 customers on average in July-August when normally we rose to 280 before the crisis. Our core clientele has disappeared: the active people of the south are no longer there, no more than the small old people and weekend families.” the Ó Restaurant then closes in the evening and on Sundays. “I was in complete stress, I was trying to find solutions but I couldn’t”he says between two puffs of the electronic cigarette.
Months pass and debts begin to pile up. “In December, I decided to put myself in receivership.” Its turnover fell by 50% compared to before Covid-19, “but the charges remain the same”. While some employees are on partial unemployment, inflation and theexplosion in the cost of raw materials hit in turn.
Eric Turpin comes out of his laundry room with a binder of bills and lists the price increases. “Lamb and poultry have taken 10 to 15% in one year. I was getting a kilo of rump steak at 11.90 euros, three euros more than before. And coffee, 7.90 euros per kilo, it’s 2.50 euros more than a year earlier. In January, it went completely crazy and we were forced to increase our prices.”
Three months later, Eric Turpin puts the key under the door “after months of reflection”. “In December, I had a 50% chance of getting out of it but there, it was inevitable. At that time, I don’t know what sauce I’m going to be eaten, I still have 130,000 euros left in ‘bank loan’he recalls.
The announcement to the nine remaining employees, the last days, the passage to court: Eric Turpin is living with difficulty the last weeks. “My company was a part of my life. I invested money, time and my health in it, and I was planning to buy a house. fucked up nine years of my life.” Eric Turpin, who approached the 60,000 rebound association to rebuild, took five months to apply for the RSA. He has also registered with Pôle emploi, whose ads he regularly monitors on his tablet, and is looking for a temporary job, “just to bring in some money” and not to live only on his savings.
While the judicial liquidation is still in progress, he says he lives with “a sword of Damocles” above him. “Before, I thought about my company day and night, now I have only one concern: to receive a letter from the bank telling me that I owe them the 50,000 euros of the joint and several guarantee, an amount that I do not have.” However, Eric Turpin assures us: “I’ll bounce back, I’m sure of it.”