Welcome to Plancha Express, in today's edition:
- How war hits your menu and margins
- One of the world’s biggest food influencers came to Budapest and made the worst possible video
- Please stop being creative with toilet signs
- A bakery success story comes to Bucharest
- Turkish food done right in Vienna
- We now have an Instagram, follow us!
How war hits your menu and margins
The US-Israeli military operation against Iran began on February 28 and has no clear end date. Hungary, Romania and Austria are far from the conflict, but their hospitality sectors are already exposed through two channels: weaker demand and rising costs.
The first is demand. In 2024, Israeli visitors accounted for around 693,000 overnight stays in Hungary. For summer 2025, Budapest Airport had planned around 590,000 seats to Israel, part of more than 1 million seats to the Middle East (the largest such capacity in Central and Eastern Europe). With air travel in the region disrupted, a significant share of visits from the region won’t materialise, and the spending that comes with them (food, drink, transport, leisure) will neither. Uncertainty about travelling is already impacting tourism in other parts of Europe, including Cyprus and Greece.
The second is costs, starting with food. Prices are likely to rise through three main drivers. Higher oil and gas prices increase costs across farming, transport and food processing. Supply disruptions around the Strait of Hormuz push up fertiliser prices globally, raising input costs for farmers across Europe. And higher oil prices make ethanol and biodiesel more competitive, diverting crops like maize and vegetable oils away from food use. After Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the same combination drove EU food and beverage inflation above 19%.
Energy costs are moving in a similar direction. Dutch TTF natural gas futures, Europe's benchmark, rose above €65/MWh in early March, more than 50% above pre-conflict levels. Eurozone energy inflation turned positive in March at 4.9%, after –3.1% in February. For hotels and restaurants, which run kitchens, heating, cooling, laundry and lighting around the clock, this feeds directly into operating costs. The pass-through depends on contract structures and national regulation, but sustained pressure erodes those buffers.
The result is a two-sided squeeze. Operators can absorb the shock and lose margin, or pass it on and risk further weakening demand.
The same kind of pressure is already reshaping menus elsewhere. In Ukraine, one restaurant operator told The Counteroffensive that when electricity cuts hit, fryers go quiet because they use too much power, and kitchens switch to shawarma cooked on a vertical grill because it is cheaper to run. That is what cost shocks look like at ground level: not just higher bills, but operators redesigning what they serve around whatever can still be cooked affordably and reliably.
Operator take: If you haven't reviewed energy contract terms and Middle Eastern booking exposure in the last 30 days, do it this week, the cost trajectory is clear and the window to adjust ahead of it is narrowing.
