Add this to the roughly 1 million bad things the U.K’s “Leave” coalition should’ve seen coming: Brexit is having a adverse effect on England’s restaurant industry. In a story today featuring reporting by chief restaurant critic Richard Vines, Bloomberg essentially gave prominent restaurateurs free rein to grumble about their compatriots’ vote to leave the EU, and they say business is already getting hammered in this post-Brexit world where “bean-counters keep closer tabs on expense accounts, a weak pound raises prices of imported food, and eateries struggle to hire workers from the EU.”
The country’s dining scene had actually been doing pretty well up till now, too — Bloomberg says the number of restaurants jumped by 21 percent over the past five years. But even in advance of the vote, sales growth industry-wide nose-dived by half. One restaurant group immediately scrapped multi-million-pound plans to buy four pubs in Scotland. Stats show there’s been 12 percent less corporate credit-card spending since the referendum, while many chefs worry the worst is yet to come because they fear already-costly products like Spanish jamón ibérico are going to climb even higher. Richard Corrigan, a celebrated chef, expects the price of French wine to jump by 15 percent and so has given staff very clear instructions to stock up on the Bordeaux.
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