Old inn, new guests: modernise without losing your regulars

Dying inns: why traditional pubs need to reinvent themselves

Headlines about the “Wirtshaussterben”, the dying of traditional inns, have a real background. According to an analysis by the credit agency Creditreform from March 2026, the German hospitality industry recorded more than 11,000 insolvencies between 2020 and 2025, and in 2024 and 2025 alone around 24,500 pubs, restaurants and bars gave up. In Brandenburg, the hospitality association DEHOGA Brandenburg estimates that of the roughly 1,900 country inns that once existed, perhaps 500 are left. The reasons are well known: higher prices for food and energy, higher staff costs, difficulty finding staff in the countryside and guests who drop in for a spontaneous beer less often.

At the same time, many houses show that there is another way. An inn in Brandenburg that has existed for more than 200 years now lives mainly from planned occasions such as birthdays, funerals and Christmas parties, and it rents out rooms. From Bodenmais in Lower Bavaria, the magazine KOMMUNAL reported in 2020 that two young locals had bought the empty “Alte Post” on the market square, renovated it and reopened it as the “Rote Res” with a bar, a restaurant with a lunch menu and a hall for parties and concerts. The pattern behind it: an inn does not survive as a copy of the past, but as a place with a clear profile, fixed occasions and reasons to come back.

Taking stock: what stays and what changes

Before you repaint walls or cut dishes, gather facts. Who brings in the revenue today? Often it is less the evenings at the bar than the lunch menu, celebrations in the function room and Sunday lunches. Analyse your till data by weekday, time and product group, and see which dishes sell well and which hardly anyone orders. Your online reviews also show what guests praise and what bothers them, as described in the guide to Google reviews in hospitality.

The menu: classics stay, new dishes join them

The menu carries the most emotion. Take a regular's favourite dish off it and you will hear about it for months. A proven approach is therefore a fixed core menu with the house classics and a changing seasonal menu on which you try new things. What works on the seasonal menu can later move to the core menu. The familiar stays, and regulars still regularly have a reason to order something new.

• Make regional origin visible: meat from the farm in the next village, potatoes from the farmer, beer from the village. How to find suppliers and label origin honestly is covered in the guide to regional cuisine at your inn.
• Vegetarian, inn style: Kasnocken or Käsespätzle (cheese noodles), mushroom goulash, Krautfleckerl (cabbage pasta), spinach dumplings or creamed mushrooms are traditional dishes without meat. They do not feel like a concession to fashion but like part of the cooking.
• Smaller portions and sharing: half portions, senior plates and small dishes to share appeal to older regulars and young guests alike.
• Less, but better: a shorter menu means less stock, less waste and more time for quality. Better twelve dishes that are spot on than 40 that come out of the freezer.
• Lunch menu: for tradespeople, the municipal office and commuters, a quick, fairly priced lunch is often the main reason to come regularly.

New dishes and new suppliers change your food cost. Recalculate every dish per portion before it goes on the menu. The basics are explained in the guide to restaurant costing, and you can work out the selling price including VAT for Austria or Germany with the price calculator for hospitality.

Dining room, function room and beer garden: renew with care

Wood panelling, a tiled stove and the traditional corner with the crucifix are not a flaw for many young guests but exactly what they are looking for. What looks old is usually something else: poor lighting, worn cushions, plastic flowers, a noisy drinks fridge, plastic tablecloths or toilets that have not been renovated for decades. These points can often be improved on a manageable budget without touching the character of the house.

For many country inns, the function room is the economic core. Weddings, christenings, birthdays, company parties, club evenings and funeral receptions bring plannable revenue, especially on days when the dining room is quiet. Modern equipment such as a projector, good acoustics and Wi-Fi also makes it attractive to companies and seminars. How to organise enquiries, menus and packages for celebrations is covered in the guide to celebrations at your inn.

Winning younger guests and new target groups

Young guests rarely end up in a village inn by chance. They need an occasion, and they often decide on their phone. So think about who else your house should be there for: young families from the new housing estate, cyclists and hiking groups, companies nearby, clubs, couples on a day trip. Each group has its own occasions and its own times.

• Seasonal promotions as a rhythm: wild garlic weeks, asparagus season, game weeks, St Martin's goose. How to turn these into an annual calendar is shown in the guide to seasonal promotions at your inn.
• Reinterpret traditions: a late-morning pint with music, the village fair (Kirtag or Kirchweih) in the beer garden, a dumpling cooking class, a beer tasting with the local brewery. The tradition stays, the format is new.
• Review your opening hours: an extra closing day during the week may pay off if you offer hot food all day from Friday to Sunday in return. The trade-offs are covered in the guide to closing days in restaurants.
• Be visible where young guests search: Instagram with photos from the kitchen, the dining room and events. Tips in the guide to Instagram for hospitality.

Website relaunch: history, photos, menu and booking

Many traditional inns have a website nobody has touched for years: the menu as a scanned PDF, old opening hours, photos from another era. Regulars do not care, they phone. For new guests, though, the website is often the first impression, before they even see the door. A relaunch is therefore one of the cheapest levers of the whole modernisation, and it need not put off regulars as long as the house is recognisable on it.

• The story of the house: how long the inn has existed, which generation runs it today, what has changed and what stays. An old photo next to a new one says more than any text.
• Real photos: dining room, function room, beer garden, the classics and the seasonal dishes, the team. No stock photos that guests immediately recognise as foreign. Tips for taking photos with your phone are in the guide to food photography.
• Menu as text: core menu, seasonal menu and lunch menu directly on the page instead of a PDF, with prices and allergens. Why this matters for guests and Google is explained in the guide to the digital menu.
• Book online, but also call: a clear button for table booking and the phone number clearly visible next to it. The guide to online reservations compares which solution suits your house.
• Celebrations and function room: a separate page with room sizes, menu suggestions and contact, so wedding and company enquiries do not get lost on the phone.
• Opening hours, closing day, kitchen hours: the same everywhere, on your website, on Google and on the door. Format them consistently with the opening hours generator.

Which content a hospitality website needs overall and in what order is covered in the guide Restaurant website: the 13 things your guests look for. The Google Business Profile is at least as important: that is where most new guests first see photos, reviews and opening hours. How to complete it is shown in the guide to the Google Business Profile.

Funding and financing in Austria and Germany

Modernising costs money, especially when kitchen, ventilation, energy or toilets are involved. Before investing, calculate the revenue at which the new costs pay for themselves. The break-even calculator for hospitality is made for this. Also check which funding is available. Many programmes are limited in time, tied to budgets or only apply in individual federal states.

Roadmap: a renewed inn in twelve months