Bavaria restaurant insolvencies rise as the buffet returns
Hospitality accounts for one in nine company failures in Bavaria this year. The 7% VAT rate has not stopped the slide, and struggling restaurants are reaching for an old formula.
Bavaria restaurant insolvencies are still climbing: the Bavarian State Office for Statistics counted 202 insolvency proceedings in hospitality in the first half of 2026, 11.4% of all company insolvencies in the state. At the same time, an old format is returning to German dining rooms, the all-inclusive buffet.
The half-year figure follows a sharp jump in 2025, when proceedings in Bavarian hospitality rose from 262 to 387, an increase of 47.7%, according to the statistics office in Fürth. The Nürnberger Nachrichten, which reported the latest numbers on 23 October, quoted DEHOGA Bayern, the state hotel and restaurant association, as saying that many businesses are operating at their economic limit.
The pattern is national. Destatis, the federal statistics office, registered 12,812 company insolvency filings in Germany between January and June 2026, 6.7% more than a year earlier. Hospitality had the second-highest rate of any sector, with 59.6 insolvencies per 10,000 businesses, behind transport and storage at 71.6 and well above the average of 36.2.
A buffet fills seats cheaply; it does not fix a cost base that rose by a third since 2022.
Why Bavaria restaurant insolvencies keep rising
DEHOGA Bayern puts the rise in costs since 2022 at 34% for labour, 27% for energy and 26% for food. Under the current wage agreement, pay goes up by almost 15% in three steps, and staff costs often exceed 40% of turnover.
Relief arrived on 1 January 2026, when VAT on restaurant food went back to 7% after two years at 19%. Thomas Geppert, managing director of DEHOGA Bayern, said in February that the reduced rate was "not a gift" but "the last lifebelt" for many businesses. A union study later found that nine in ten menu prices stayed where they were after the VAT cut, which employers attribute to wages and costs rather than to margins.
All-inclusive buffets return to German restaurants
The trend that has resurfaced is the all-inclusive offer and the all-you-can-eat buffet, used to fill tables with guests who now spend less per visit. "All-inclusive offers are coming back because restaurateurs are desperate," restaurant consultant Björn Grimm told the Frankfurter Rundschau, as reported by oe24 on 21 October. Guests increasingly choose breakfast or a cheaper lunch instead of an expensive dinner, he said.
The format has a known weakness: consumption at a buffet is hard to calculate, which raises the risk of food waste. Grimm argues that restaurants need a clear position, either affordable and accessible or premium with a distinct experience, and that concepts caught in between are losing ground.
The next cost step is already fixed. The statutory minimum wage, €13.90 an hour since January, rises to €14.60 on 1 January 2027. Not every operator is retreating, though: Pizza Pilgrims chose Munich for its German debut this month.
