Illustration photoA new METRO ranking compared 20 EU countries by how easy it is to open a restaurant there. Spain wins, while Austria, Hungary and Czechia bring up the rear. For Slovak owners it works as a mirror: our neighbours show what happens when costs catch up with the West and revenues do not.
Picture a map of Europe where someone has coloured each country by how easy it is to open a restaurant there today. Spain glows in the south, Finland and Denmark in the north. Then you look at Slovakia's borders and notice that we are surrounded by the bottom three: Austria in 18th place, Hungary in 19th and Czechia dead last.
That is the result of the Restaurant Launch Report published in autumn 2026 by METRO Marktplatz, the online marketplace of the METRO wholesale group for hospitality businesses. It compares 20 European Union countries across nine indicators grouped into four areas: revenue and demand, costs and margins, setup and staffing, and competition and real estate. Each area carries equal weight. Slovakia does not appear in the summaries published so far, and that is exactly what makes the ranking interesting: it describes the markets right next door, the ones we visit for inspiration and the ones our guests and cooks come from.
Spain scored the full 100 points. The recipe is no secret: according to the report, tourists spend more than €98 billion a year there, against roughly €71 billion in France and about €54 billion in Italy. Add relatively cheap food and energy and a labour market where a waiter vacancy is filled faster than elsewhere.
An interesting detail sits below the surface, though. The average Spanish venue takes in around €280,000 a year, according to the report, compared with roughly €460,000 in Germany and about €810,000 in Luxembourg. So the best market for opening is not necessarily the one with the highest revenue per venue. It is the one where costs do not eat the money before the guest has paid.
Behind Spain come Finland (83.4 points), Denmark (72.5) and Sweden (67.9). The Nordics benefit from cheap electricity at around 9 to 13 cents per kilowatt-hour, while France pays about 16 cents, Germany and Austria around 21 and Ireland as much as 28. For a kitchen where fridges, ovens and ventilation run all day, that is not a statistic. It is the monthly bill.
Austria is a paradox. According to Eurostat figures cited in the report, people there spend more than €3,000 per head a year in hospitality, one of the highest figures in the comparison. Guests come and they pay. But energy is on the expensive side, setting up a business is more bureaucratic according to the report, and many hospitality jobs remain unfilled. The demand is there; the road to it is steep.
Czechia finished last with a single point, even though it has some of the cheapest food and drink prices in the comparison. Weak scores in administration, location and competition pulled it to the bottom. Together with Greece and Portugal, Czechia has one of the densest restaurant networks, around three to four venues per thousand inhabitants. A new place there is not fighting for an empty spot on the map, but for the attention of a guest who has three other options around the corner.
Hungary is the story worth reading slowly. According to figures Euronews compiled in early October, the country lost six percent of its hospitality venues between 2021 and 2024, while 22 member states gained venues. Over ten years almost a fifth of businesses disappeared, 18.5 percent. In Budapest the number of venues fell to 7,778 at the end of 2025, the lowest since records began.
Zoltán Kőrössy, founder of the Eventrend group, which runs 35 venues, summed it up for Euronews in a way Slovak owners will recognise: energy, wages and ingredients have all reached European levels. Revenues have not. Austria has a similar number of venues to Hungary, yet according to Euronews its sector turns over twice as much. On top of that, a stronger forint made Budapest 12 to 14 percent more expensive for tourists paying in euros, and in August 14 percent fewer foreign visitors arrived than a year earlier.
Áron Reményik, author of the Hungarian study, points to one more effect: cheap tourist stalls selling lángos and goulash, living on high margins and one-off guests, are pushing quality restaurants out of the best streets. When food stops being what it is and is sold as an attraction, it is not only the plate that suffers, but the reputation of the whole country.
No ranking will decide for you whether to open a bistro in Trnava or a wine bar in Banská Štiavnica. METRO itself stresses that the report is a comparative benchmark, not a substitute for a business plan or a study of a specific site. Still, the neighbours' stories suggest three questions worth asking out loud.
First: are my revenues growing as fast as my costs? The Hungarian lesson is that when energy, wages and ingredients approach Western prices but guests' purchasing power does not, the venues hit hardest are those that rely on regular local guests.
Second: who am I really competing with? The Czech density figure is a reminder that on a crowded street the winner is not the cheapest place, but the one guests remember. A clear concept costs less than another discount.
Third: am I betting on tourists or on neighbours? Spain shows the power of tourism, Hungary its fragility. One stronger currency or one weaker season can change the arithmetic of a whole year. A venue with a loyal local clientele weathers that kind of shock more easily.
The ranking from Düsseldorf does not say a word about Slovakia. It does say a lot about how similar we are to our neighbours: expensive energy, hard-to-fill floor jobs and guests who count every euro. The good news is that, unlike the forint exchange rate or the power price on the exchange, an owner controls the most important thing: the reason a guest comes back.
Sources: METRO Marktplatz – Restaurant Launch Report 2026 (metro.de), Tageskarte, Vinetur, Euronews (3 Oct 2026). This text is an original piece by the NajGastro.sk editorial team.