Mosturizm announced an increase in restaurant attendance by more than a third

Attendance at Moscow restaurants in January-June 2023 increased by a third compared to last year, and turnover by 27%, Mosturizm reports. Restaurateurs attribute this growth to the whitening of the market

In the first half of 2023, Moscow residents and guests visited restaurants, bars and cafes 36% more often than in the same period last year, the capital’s tourism committee told RBC. Their turnover, according to Mosturism, increased by 27% year-on-year, to 294 billion rubles.

The average bill in restaurants, cafes and bars in Moscow for the first six months of 2023 was 1.3 thousand rubles. Tourists' spending, as a rule, exceeded this amount by 30%: their average bill for the first half of the year was 1.7 thousand rubles.

How did they think?

Mosturizm assessed the attendance and spending of guests in restaurants in the capital based on data on payments using Sberbank cards. Analysts studied transactions using customer cards in 8 thousand Moscow catering establishments in the category of restaurants, cafes and bars (fast food was not taken into account in the statistics). This covers more than 40% of establishments: in total, as Mosturizm clarified, there are 18.5 thousand public catering outlets in the city, excluding fast food. Analysts distinguished visitors from Moscow residents by the home region of their bank card.

Spending by tourists in Moscow restaurants last year was higher than that of Muscovites, Mosturizm notes. In 2022, residents of other regions of RUSSIA spent 50% more in mass establishments, and 10–15% more in high-end restaurants. Spending by tourists in restaurants last year even exceeded the pre-Covid 2019 levels. But numerically, the bulk of visitors are Moscow residents: in 2022, tourists accounted for only 13% of all trips to the capital’s cafes and restaurants.

What restaurateurs say

Owners of cafes and restaurants do not see a noticeable increase in the number of visitors, and RBC's market source associates the increase in the number of transactions recorded by Sberbank with the growing popularity of non-cash payments and the whitewashing of business.

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Attendance at catering establishments in the first six months of 2023 increased year on year within 10%, but no more, says the founder of the MEAT & Fish restaurant chain and chairman of the coordinating council of the Federation of Restaurateurs and Hoteliers (FRiO) Sergei Mironov. “If attendance in Moscow increased by 36%, [restaurants] would have a huge increase in revenue, but there is simply no such revenue,” explains RBC’s interlocutor. The turnover of restaurants and bars in Moscow increased in the first half of the year, but Mironov attributes this, among other things, to rising prices: because of this, the average check in establishments increased by 15%.

With the fact that the increase in the number of banking transactions in restaurants is not the result of an increase in attendance, but a whitewashing of the market, believes the founder of the White Rabbit Family, Boris Zarkov. Business has come out of the shadows, but there are no more people in food establishments, the restaurateur noted. According to him, this year the turnover of comparable establishments remains at the level of last year, “plus or minus 2-3%, and in some places - minus 10%.”

How the catering market is being whitewashed

At the end of last year, it became known that Rosfinmonitoring, the Central Bank and the Federal Tax Service had discovered one of the largest shadow platforms for tax evasion, concealment and legalization of income of restaurants and cafes throughout Russia. The scheme operated from 2018 to 2022 and consisted of a series of opaque settlements between companies providing processing services and several credit institutions. It worked on the principle of an “acquiring fault”: non-cash payments from customers passed through a terminal that did not belong to the restaurant, and even banks serving these establishments received distorted data. If usually money for restaurant services was credited directly to the establishment from its bank, and the proceedswas declared in full, then in this scheme the payment went through a chain of at least three credit institutions in order to confuse the transaction scheme, the Federal Tax Service explained. As a result, the money went to companies that were not related to the restaurant business, but “generated a stable cash flow.” The main link in concealing taxes was the settlement non-bank credit organization Russian Investment Bank. The scheme allowed restaurants and cafes to pay gray wages and keep financial indicators at the level necessary to receive tax benefits and the right not to pay VAT.

After the scheme was discovered, the Federal Tax Service inspected several restaurant chains, including the Anderson cafe chain, as well as the Menza and Jan Primus restaurants, a source in the restaurant market told RBC. The turnover of the shadow scheme, as the audit showed, was estimated at 100 billion rubles. per year, and the amount of criminal income amounted to 8–10% of this amount, that is, 8–10 billion rubles. in year.

The increase in the number of visitors to the capital's restaurants and bars in the first half of the year may not be 36%, but slightly less, admits the President of the Federal Republic of Riga, Igor Bukharov. In his opinion, catering attendance could be affected by the growing popularity of domestic tourism: against the backdrop of rising prices for holidays in other countries and difficulties associated with traveling abroad, people from other regions began to come to Moscow more often. And the increase in turnover is more likely associated with rising prices - here the President of the Federal Agency for Economic Development and Trade agrees with Mironov. According to RBC calculations based on Rosstat data, the average cost of lunch in a Moscow restaurant in the first half of 2023 per person was 1,363 rubles, which is 14.8% more than last year.

Tourists traditionally spend more on food than Muscovites - this has always been the case, Mironov believes. He believes that there are definitely more tourists in Moscow this year, but it must be taken into account that the share of travelers in Moscow catering is small. The main visitors are Muscovites, as well as people who live and work in the capital. Before the pandemic, 80% of tourists in Moscow were foreigners, but now they are not, and if it weren’t for domestic tourism, which saves the situation, “everything would have gotten really bad,” Zarkov admits.

What is happening with the tourist flow in Moscow

2019 was a record year for the number of tourists in Moscow - then the city was visited by 25.1 million tourists. A sharp drop in tourist flow was recorded in 2020 amid the covid-19 pandemic , when 13.6 million guests visited the city - 46% less than in the previous year. After the lifting of covid restrictions, the domestic tourist flow began to gradually recover: in 2022, the capital was already visited by 17.9 million people, or 71% of the pre-Covid 2019 tourist flow and 1 million more than in 2021, said Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin .

The number of guests continues to grow in 2023: in the first six months, 10.3 million travelers visited Moscow - 22% more than the same period last year, reported Deputy Mayor Natalya Sergunina. The majority of guests, 9.4 million, were Russian tourists, which is 4% more than in 2019, she clarified.

The authorities associate a significant contribution to the restoration of tourism with the active development of the business segment: businessmen on trips spend one and a half to two times more than other guests, and also stay in hotels of the four-star and five-star categories, Mosturizm points out. In the first half of the year, according to the department, the capital was most often visited by travelers from St. Petersburg, Krasnodar Territory, Vladimir, Rostov and Tula regions.