Brussels cafe owners campaign against unfair contracts

Cafe goers and owners were out in force last weekend at a demonstration in central Brussels following the closure of iconic cafes including Au Daringman, Monk and Café Metteko.

The closures are due to so-called "stranglehold contracts" in which an obligation to purchase drinks is linked to a rental contract. In short, bars need to sign agreements with the drink distributors from whom they rent a building.

Café Metteko on Boulevard Anspach has been closed since last summer. Its owner, cafe and bars expert Hubert Blanquet, has filed for bankruptcy and landlord HLS has put the building up for rent.

Blanquet has also been manager of the Zebra, Le Roi des Belges and Mappa Mundo cafes for 20 years. But he told Bruzz that he only has problems with HLS, where, “it’s all about profit,” he says. “We are exploited and squeezed like lemons.”

Filip Jans, who owned Monk, agreed: “This is a festive protest against the stranglehold contracts, against uniformity and against the large liquor distributors killing the catering industry.”

Another demonstration organiser, Jan Van den Bossche, said cafe owners have to pay a high rent, which is then linked to skyrocketing drinks prices.

“As a cafe owner, you have to achieve a certain volume right away to survive, while the drinks dealers profit,” he said, calling for “a split between rental and beverage contracts”.

In the meantime, Bruzz notes that Belgium’s new Arizona federal government administration, finally appointed on 31 January, led by the New Flemish Alliance’s Bart de Wever, is working to contest such stranglehold contracts, as stated in the new coalition agreement.