Strict demands from the landlord: “The working hours almost drove us to the grave”

class=”sc-29f61514-0 fwWrRV”>

It ends at the end of the year after four years. Sarah Tiefenbacher and her husband Felipe Rojas are giving up the Sennhütte mountain inn in Tösstal. They relied on local products and homemade things. Casual restaurant was their trademark. The two did business successfully. Get the best Google reviews.

And yet: you can’t do this anymore. “The opening hours almost drove us to our graves,” they tell “Landbote.” The restaurant belongs to the Zurich Construction Department. And the cantonal requirements are demanding. The terms are clear in the lease agreement. Sennhütte should be open from 9 am to 9 pm during the summer months. If the weather is nice, until 22.00 in the evening. Even in winter, innkeepers are required to be open from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. This gets to the heart of the matter.

16 hours a day, five days a week

Concretely, this means for a normal working day: “We get up at 6 in the morning, bake bread and cakes on Sunday, knit, prepare the restaurant, serve the hotel and then regular guests, manage two double rooms and two groups. rooms, the cook eats lunch, answers emails, looks after our four-year-old daughter, cleans, serves cakes and coffee, tidies up, cooks dinner, cleans. “Five days a week, at least 16 hours a day,” they tell “Landbote.” No wonder the issue has come to this point.

The two are helpless. «We can’t find anyone who wants to work as much as we do. “Many of the talented ones are already exhausted,” says Sarah Tiefenbacher. Neighbors help. They cannot permanently hire anyone to work 1000 meters above sea level. Added to this is the shortage of qualified personnel.

“Simply a simple restaurant”

In such a situation, shift work is absolutely not possible. It gets to the point. “Even if we could take one more day out of the week, we would survive.” Then there will be more time for everything that happens outside of daily operations.

What wishes do you have for your heirs? “It would be nice if they adopted our basic idea,” Tiefenbacher tells Blick. This means working without finished products and sourcing eggs and meat from neighboring farmers. “I would be happy running a modest restaurant.”

He has no fear about the future. «We have good connections. We receive job offers from various regions. And we can well dream of starting over abroad, for example in Chile, once the political situation there has calmed down.

“You can’t run a bar eating five grappas a week.”

“Guests’ consumption behavior has changed.” In the past, innkeepers in places like Sennhütte sold alcohol. The hostess said that nowadays guests usually order only water or a glass of “good wine.” “Drinking is no longer socially acceptable.” Then he adds: If he sells five grappas a week, that’s too much. This means that a restaurant cannot be operated profitably.

The Zurich construction department does not want to respond to specific allegations “for data protection and privacy reasons”. What will happen next for him is still unclear. Tiefenbacher says she and her husband have received many job offers. “Now we need a break first.”

Source :Blick