From gastro-marital discord to inspiring German statesmanship

With all the macro-economic talk surrounding Brexit and the doomsday scenarios being painted by each side's proponents, it's never long before parallels with marriage and divorce are being drawn by anyone giving a speech on the subject. Now all the talking is done, and we'll know soon enough what the outcome will be to that critical question.  

On a less lofty geopolitical level, but no less important to its participants for that, the subject of matrimony was the key Leitfaden running through the two days of Heuer Dialog's recent first outing of the International Gastro-Immobilienkongress in Berlin, attended by 150 real estate and food operators from across Europe and supported by REFIRE.

The event – with the strapline "Eating is the new Shopping" - was content-packed and crammed with first-hand case studies from a broad cross-section of Europe's up-and-coming 'casual dining' operators.

Jonathan Doughty, a food service veteran and self-confessed "survivor of a number of marriages" introduced the marital theme into his punchy opening presentation, and subsequent speakers picked up the idea to highlight their own experiences of gastro-marital discord. And much of it is, indeed, a tale of mutual misunderstanding.

With ever more space in retail centres being given over to new dining concepts, gastronomy is critical to the success of modern retail developments. And yet, traditional biases apply – the landlord wants higher rent and long-term lease contracts with established blue-chip tenants, while the exciting new food concepts want shorter leases, have high furnishing demands, and want to pay lower rents. Not always do the twain meet.

As Klaus Rethmeier of leading retail asset manager ECE Projekmanagement put it, sometimes a translator (or 'marriage counsellor') is necessary for real estate people and food services people to understand each other, because they're talking different languages." Consumer shopping behaviour is changing rapidly – Germany's ECE shopping centres have seen their gastro-turnover increase by 54% in the last ten years. Yet not everyone is staying up with the times.

For food-servicers and real estate people, it's dynamism and creativity on the one hand, security and stability on the other. Gut feeling for what will work, versus money-driven rationality. Food and beverages as seduction, as enticement to higher material consumption, rather than a tolerated necessity. We learnt from Chris Muller of Boston University that in the US the renovation cycle for established gastro-brands has now sunk to three years. As soon as you've refurbished your brand across all its locations, it's time to start again. Now go tell that to your landlord.

Exhausted from grappling with these culinary and gastro-dilemmas, REFIRE joined 1300 delegates at the annual ZIA Zentraler Immobilien Ausschuss gathering, an annual schmooze-fest attended by real estate company bigwigs and host to leading German government politicians.

Among the keynote speakers was ex-New York mayor Rudolph Giuliani, now a senior law partner and big fan of Berlin, but in those days the man on the spot when the planes went into the twin towers. With so much first-hand experience to draw upon, his speech was disappointingly thin, except to urge the Berlin city fathers to cultivate a lively night-life as a guarantor for the city's economic success. And make sure there's plenty of opera, too. And not too much regulation. And by the way, on affordable housing matters, crippling shortages aren't bad because they show that lots of people want to live there. Cue a nervous ripple of laughter across the hall.

Outside on the street, rowdy demonstrators – among the many who DO want to live there – surrounded the building and threw missiles in protest at soaring rents and the gentrification of their neighbourhoods by the (presumably responsible) capitalist running dogs inside. Only with the intervention of large numbers of police were the demonstrators held at bay long enough to allow the crème de la crème of the German real estate industry to adjourn to the nearby Berliner Stadtschloss for the evening soiree.

But not before listening to an impassioned speech by Professor Norbert Lammert, the President of the German Bundestag (the second-highest office in Germany) and possible successor to President Gauck when he steps down in February next year. Although barely mentioning Britain, but like everyone else in the crowded hall more than conscious of the big elephant in the room, Prof. Lammert made the most persuasive case for mutual cooperation in a struggling Europe that many in his audience had ever heard. It earned the longest standing ovation in the ten-year history of this excellent ZIA event.

While Prof. Lammert doused speculation that he would be a candidate for the top job next year, many who witnessed his thoughtful and measured assessment of the challenges that Europe (and not jut the EU) are facing would now surely feel more confident in having such a man as their head of state. His reflections on where Europe stands, articulated so well to a sophisticated audience who care genuinely about the outcome of the Brexit vote, would surely make many a Brexiteer pause and inhale deeply before casting their irrevocable ballot.