A market worth almost 24 billion, to be precise 23.8 billion euros. This is the overall turnover of the 152 thousand bars in Italy which in 2025 had almost 6 billion visits from customers and consumers. Generally speaking, these places are open 14 hours a day and very often seven days a week. They represent a pillar for consumption outside the home and a staple in the habits of Italians and tourists for espresso and cappuccino in the morning. This habit leads the ranking of consumption moments presented by Fipe-Confcommercio at Sigep 2026 during the round table «The future of the Italian bar (and prospects for 2026)» in which Lino Enrico Stoppani, President of Fipe, Andrea Illy, president of Illycaffè and Fipe councilor for the Observatory on the bar supply chain, Alessandro Angelon, CEO of Sammontana Italia and Paolo Staccoli, owner of the homonymous coffee.
According to Fipe data, on a typical day, 44% of visitors are linked to breakfast, 29% to breaks, 14% to aperitifs, 6% to lunch, 3% to dinner and 4% to after dinner, confirming how the bar is first and foremost the place for daily meetings. The point is that for merchants the average receipt is 4.2 euros each in an intense, onerous daily commitment sometimes at the mercy of petty crime. «These sectors are central in the daily lives of Italians, but at the same time they clearly indicate how the key to maintaining this positioning is to look forward – said Lino Enrico Stoppani, president of Fipe-Confcommercio -. 2026 must be the year in which the eating out system will be able to find a new point of balance between economic sustainability, quality of offer and ability to intercept rapidly changing consumption habits. Bars, ice cream parlors and pastry shops are not just economic activities, but safeguards of sociality, identity and tourist attractiveness: valorising them means investing in a heritage that makes our country unique, as demonstrated by the UNESCO recognition for Italian cuisine, and which can continue to generate value for businesses, workers and territories”.
«Through its primary functions of refreshment and conviviality, the Italian bar plays an indispensable social role – adds Andrea Illy, president of Illycaffè -. In recent years, demographic changes, changes in working habits and lifestyles, in the regulatory framework, as well as in competition from alternative distribution formulas, have made the market more difficult, while at the same time increasing the need for refreshment and the desire for conviviality, also on the part of the growing tourist flows. There are therefore concrete opportunities for revitalizing the national bar network, through innovation and quality improvement. To this end, the levers that Fipe intends to activate are professional training, the beautiful, good and well-made as Italy’s strong point, and new business models that mobilize investments.”
The bar in its meaning is above all a source of employment. There are almost 368 thousand workers engaged in the sector, of which over 284 thousand are employees with a strong prevalence of female staff (58.9%), under 30s (41.3%) and a 20.8% presence of foreign workers. 57.5% of staff have a permanent contract. The vast majority of businesses are independent while only 3,820 belong to chains. The management of a bar for decades has been based on the family structure, the presence in the neighborhood, in a small village, a bulwark against desertification and the defense of urban space. Despite this, the balance between openings and closures, in the first nine months of 2025, is negative with the closure of almost 2,900 businesses while the survival rate, five years after opening, is 53%. In other words: only one in two makes it.
