‘Last orders’ sounds earlier and earlier: why are Brussels pubs closing so soon?

‘I am currently here in Ostend and I am frankly surprised how late you can stay out here and still find a beer,’ says Leentje Bruyninckx of the Roskam pub. ‘Maybe Brussels has just calmed down a bit?’

She has a point: anyone wanting to organise a Saturday night pub crawl around the Vismarkt these days needs to keep an eye on the clock. At Jardin Hospice, last orders are taken around midnight. Fortunately, you can still go to Au Bassin that stays open until 1.30 a.m. before moving on to the Cheval Marin, which stays open another 30 minutes.

After that, even for seasoned pub-goers the choices become a lot more difficult. What happened to the days when you had plenty of places to finish your evening with a last round late at night?

Many pubs have cut back on opening hours in recent years. That has a lot to do with the successive crises Belgium faced. These have pushed up labour costs in the sector.

‘Since the pandemic, we started closing earlier because there is often little point in staying open very late. It's just an economic calculation,’ argues Leentje Bruyninckx of the Roskam pub on Vlaamsesteenweg. It is also the analysis made by Erik Beunckens of Belgium’s Pubs’ Federation.

‘There are several reasons for this trend: wage costs have risen by 12 per cent, but going to the pub has also simply become an expensive business’

Thomas Kok runs Maison du Peuple in Sint-Gillis and Chez Richard at the Grote Zavel.

‘Brussels simply empties out in the summer months. After the terrace closes, nobody wants to sit inside in a hot bar.’

Another explanation for the earlier closing hours, according to Thomas, is the strict noise standards in place in Brussels. ‘We have the necessary licences at Chez Richard, but local residents really put us under a lot of pressure and that can really get tiresome. As soon as we are a bit too late or too loud, people start talking about sanctions. We have now stopped all our DJ events.’

Looking on the bright side

At the same time, earlier fixed closing hours do have their advantages, argues Leentje Bruyninckx of the Roskam. ‘We used to stay open as long as customers stayed, but fixed hours are actually very convenient and we find that the staff appreciate that too.’

‘Lack of clarity actually creates many more problems: why can you get another pint one day and not the next?”

Brussels slows down

‘Covid seems to have made a lot of colleagues realise that you can slow down: being open 7 days a week is not necessary’ says Thomas Kok.

‘Since corona, the job of barman or bartender has also changed,’ explains Jan De Greef of the Kafka café in the Brussels downtown. ‘It has become more a student job than a real métier’.

Fortunately, most of the regular customers in the downtown agree with the owners that it is only fair to have that last half-pint at a reasonable hour.