Restaurant menus will have to indicate dishes that are not “homemade” by 2025

Soon there will be changes to restaurant menus. The Minister for SMEs and Commerce wants any non-“homemade” dish to be marked on the menus of France’s 175,000 restaurants by 2025 at the latest, she announced in an interview published on Sunday October 22 in La Tribune Sunday. “We have been working on this for several months. We had to act. Because the – optional – mention on the ‘homemade’ cards, a label created in 2014, is complicated and therefore remains little used”concedes Olivia Grégoire.

The government wishes to provide “more transparency, for everyday customers and tourists alike”. “It’s also good for the morale of restaurateurs who go out of their way to offer homemade dishes to their customers”, defends Olivia Grégoire. Consultations will need to be carried out with organizations representing the sector.

The term “homemade” is accompanied by a logo consisting of a saucepan on which a house roof is placed. This label, which allows the identification of dishes prepared on site from raw products, had been the subject of long debates, particularly in the profession, on the exact definition of a “raw product”. Frozen products were finally included, with the exception of frozen fries. THE president of the French association of master restaurateurs, Alain Fontaine, estimates on franceinfo that only 7,000 restaurants offer “totally homemade cuisine”.