Having spent three weeks enjoying the vibrant food and restaurant scene in France, I was looking forward to reacquainting myself with the foodie scene in my home city, so on Friday night I set out to enjoy a meal at one of the more recently-opened independent restaurants in Norwich.

On a warm summer’s evening, I was eager to enjoy an aperitif or two first, taking in the relaxed al fresco buzz of a city easing itself into the weekend.

I had pre-booked my restaurant table, so the only worry was whether I would be able to find somewhere to sit with a drink on what should have been one of the busiest nights of the year for our hospitality businesses.

Instead, what I found was a city which seemed to have gone into hibernation.  In a cocktail bar which frankly should have been rammed on a Friday evening, more than half of the tables were available. When I finally arrived at the restaurant to eat, there were just four of us in the entire place. 

That is a crying shame, because the food was truly excellent, the service friendly and attentive (to be fair the server was not rushed off her feet), and despite the lack of people, we had a great time. But you have to worry about the future of our hospitality businesses if this is what a peak summer Friday night looks like in the city.

This is not a specific Norwich problem.  A recent report from UK Hospitality found that a quarter of UK hospitality businesses are on the edge of financial collapse – in other words running out of funds with no cash reserves. 

A further 29 per cent said they have less than three months’ worth of turnover in reserve.  One media report summed the situation up by saying ‘The UK hospitality sector is on the brink of collapse’.

Across the country, nearly 2,000 restaurants entered insolvency in 2023 – that is more than five a day.  Even in the last quarter of the year, when eateries traditionally see a boost in takings thanks to the festive season, more than 500 shut their doors. 

Each one of those insolvencies has put its staff out of work, its suppliers out of pocket, and shattered the dreams and probably the savings of its owners.

Some of these will have been chain restaurants, and while in these cases the shareholder pain tends to be felt by large corporations which can take it, each such closure also impacts on the ordinary staff members who find themselves out of work; when you are made redundant, it doesn’t really matter whether it’s by a chain or an independent, the end result is pretty much the same.

That said, we should be more concerned when our locally-owned, independent eateries are threatened.  For a start, these establishments are far more likely to use local suppliers, so any closure will have a more profound effect on Norfolk’s economy. 

But just as importantly, as customers we suffer disproportionately when an independent restaurant closes, because it has a much greater effect on the diversity and quality of our choice of where to eat.

Certainly a part of the malaise in hospitality is due to the cost-of-living crisis; many people simply don’t have the money to spend on going out.  But that is not the full story: too many of us have fallen into taking the easy option of ordering a takeaway and staying on our sofa rather than making the effort to get out and support our hard-pressed hospitality sector.

Even when we can be bothered to get off our couches, we have become absurdly fickle.  We happily flock to the latest opening or pop-up, trying to keep up with the latest social media fad, and briefly making pretty much any new restaurant an instant success, whatever the quality or value it offers.

However, with our miniscule attention spans, very soon something else new comes onto our radar, and we move on; customer loyalty is largely becoming a thing of the past. 

And then we are somehow surprised when our old favourites close down, not because they have done anything wrong, but because we are slaves to the latest fad.  But we shouldn’t really complain, because it is our own behaviour as customers which is causing this merry-go-round of openings and closures in the restaurant world.

No matter how successful or long-established, pretty much any restaurant is never more than a couple of lean months away from going bust.  This is particularly true for individual, independent establishments, because they don’t have the deep pockets that many of the corporations behind chains have, to tide them through the quieter times of year.

Given the current situation – not just in Norfolk but across the country – if we continue to do this, we are very likely to see more restaurants and bars disappearing during the coming months. 

It is a case of ‘use it or lose it’ – you have been warned.