Law Restricted Cuba's Restaurant Scene Now Goes Free
After years spent working in dreary state-run restaurants and hush-hush culinary speakeasies, restaurateurs and chefs are operating under a set of new, less exacting rules that allow their talents freer reign. There are a brand new places and splashy re-openings in and around Cuba.
If the restaurants are successful, they could generate badly needed tax revenue and provide a model for how to shrink the bloated state-employed sector by absorbing hundreds of thousands of bureaucrats into the private sector.
Authorities first let private restaurants open in homes in 1993 during the austerity that followed the collapse of Cuba's lifeline, the Soviet Union. But just months later they slammed on the brakes. In 1995 they rolled out strict rules: Paladars (the word is Spanish for "palate") were limited to 12 seats and prohibited from serving steak or seafood. Live music was banned. Employees had to be family members or registered as residents of the home. The new rules allow the independent restaurants to seat up to 20 people. Gone is the ban on seafood and steak, as well as the rule on hiring only family members.
Since then 60 to 100 restaurants have been launched in Havana, including new, reopened and clandestine ones that went legit. They're also opening in lesser numbers in cities on the tourist route. In blistering hot Santiago de Cuba, the island's second largest city, a number of homes now have improvised ice cream and fruit shops.
Getting a license for a new restaurant is now quick and easy, and government inspectors are professional and helpful. Still, running a restaurant can be brutal even in a thriving economy. In Cuba, there's an array of taxes that one restaurateur estimates will take at least 60 percent of his earnings this year. Supplies of fresh ingredients are unreliable and credit is often unobtainable. The government is developing plans to extend loans, but for now, many entrepreneurs have gotten startup capital from relatives overseas.
Foreigners and well-heeled Cubans are too few to support all the new restaurants that have opened, and some restaurateurs are already scaling back operations or giving up. So restaurant owners are tempering their expectations for now.
If the restaurants are successful, they could generate badly needed tax revenue and provide a model for how to shrink the bloated state-employed sector by absorbing hundreds of thousands of bureaucrats into the private sector.
Authorities first let private restaurants open in homes in 1993 during the austerity that followed the collapse of Cuba's lifeline, the Soviet Union. But just months later they slammed on the brakes. In 1995 they rolled out strict rules: Paladars (the word is Spanish for "palate") were limited to 12 seats and prohibited from serving steak or seafood. Live music was banned. Employees had to be family members or registered as residents of the home. The new rules allow the independent restaurants to seat up to 20 people. Gone is the ban on seafood and steak, as well as the rule on hiring only family members.
Since then 60 to 100 restaurants have been launched in Havana, including new, reopened and clandestine ones that went legit. They're also opening in lesser numbers in cities on the tourist route. In blistering hot Santiago de Cuba, the island's second largest city, a number of homes now have improvised ice cream and fruit shops.
Getting a license for a new restaurant is now quick and easy, and government inspectors are professional and helpful. Still, running a restaurant can be brutal even in a thriving economy. In Cuba, there's an array of taxes that one restaurateur estimates will take at least 60 percent of his earnings this year. Supplies of fresh ingredients are unreliable and credit is often unobtainable. The government is developing plans to extend loans, but for now, many entrepreneurs have gotten startup capital from relatives overseas.
Foreigners and well-heeled Cubans are too few to support all the new restaurants that have opened, and some restaurateurs are already scaling back operations or giving up. So restaurant owners are tempering their expectations for now.
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