Oct 28th, 2020, 12:23 AM

Paris Restaurants are Fighting to #RESTONSOUVERTS

By Clara Appia
restons-ouverts-logo
Restons Ouverts Paris Logo. Image Credit: Restons Ouverts
As COVID-19 cases continue to rise across Metropolitan France, restaurant and bar owners in the capital fear that “toute fermeture est definitive.”

Following the closures of bars and restaurants in the southern French cities of Marseille and Aix en Provence, bar and restaurant owners in Paris have been organizing to protest the increasing government restrictions under the banner of a movement they are calling Restons Ouverts. 

"We refuse to be considered today by the public authorities as the scapegoats for the resurgence of the pandemic while we are deploying exemplary efforts to respect the protective measures in our establishments," stated a Restons Ouverts press release. 

The nightlife and hospitality industries have taken much of the brunt of the economic impacts of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. With government-mandated quarantines, work from home orders and the ongoing second wave of infections, the threat of permanent closure and financial instability is weighing hard on owners of restaurants, bars and nightclubs. 

Organizers of Restons Ouverts first met to make their concerns heard at Les Invalides across the road from the Musée de L'Armée on September 27, and quickly centralized their power into a social media campaign of the same name. The @RestonsOuverts Instagram page launched days later and amassed nearly 2,500 followers by featuring live footage of their protests and encouraging others to join their cause.

Those first protests in the last weeks of September and the accompanying Instagram page were quickly followed by increased media coverage as the organizers staged increasingly audacious and inventive protests in highly visible places. Protestors took to the streets to bang pots and pans throughout the 1st and 2nd arrondissements. Organizers followed this with a march through the streets of the 11th arrondissement — protestors were again seen banging pots and pans and had lit flares along the popular Rue de Lappe in Bastille. 

Restons Ouverts organizers quickly put together what some in the French media called a "bar éphémère" — an installation in both the Arts et Métier and Assemblée National metro stations featured Co-Director of Maze Bar Ousseyne Soumah mixing cocktails along with several restaurant owners, bartenders and a DJ to draw attention to the bar closure orders.

"When you take a crowded metro, are you safer than if you were in a bar?" asked one protest attendee. "I'm not sure."

Protestors highlighted the discrepancy in policy between bars, restaurants, gyms and the metro as a key point of concern for those in the movement.  

As protestors faced down the prospect of the then-upcoming remarks from French President Emmanuel Macron, on October 14 they held yet another open-air bar demonstration in the main plaza outside Gare Saint Lazare, in an effort to up the ante and get their voices heard. With every closure and restriction, gym owners, exercise coaches and even DJs have joined the movement to exercise and spin their own music at each protest.

This movement is occurring in the shadow of increasingly alarming public health numbers. The Île-de-France region currently holds the grim distinction of leading COVID-19 related deaths in Metropolitan France, with just under 9,000 since the beginning of the pandemic. Case numbers are rising higher than ever amidst the second wave of the virus and Paris is a particularly active hotspot. Areas are classified as being on alert when cases have reached 50 per 100,000 inhabitants, but the French capital is currently contending with more than 800 positive cases per 100,000 inhabitants between the ages of 20-30 years old alone.

Paris during the lockdown. Image Credit: Amy Thorpe
 

Parisians already endured a nearly 2-month lockdown from March 17 to May 11 of this year. During this time, many restaurants remained closed or resorted to using intermediary delivery services like UberEats and Deliveroo. This, in addition to the Gilets Jaunes protests that kicked off in late 2018 and an extended metro strike in 2019, has created a very difficult financial situation in the Paris brasserie and nightlife community. 

"The situation has been extremely delicate for us for six months," said Restons Ouverts founder David Zenouda in an interview with LCI. 

France ranked second only to Italy in the strictness of its lockdown measures but has since seen a dramatic increase in cases. The future remains uncertain for restaurants, bars and nightclubs in this environment. What began as a series of “breaking measures” has turned into a full-blown curfew, and more serious steps may still be taken by the French government to diminish the spread of the coronavirus. However, one thing is for sure: the Restons Ouverts movement will not take kindly to any increased restrictions on their establishments. Given the economic crisis they have been surviving in, once they close, many restaurants and bars in Paris may never open again. 

restaurant
covid
bar
protest