Customers are disappearing as costs rise. Across Italy, coffee shops (bars) are closing - or, more accurately, transforming. They remain one of the country’s enduring symbols, but they have become unintended casualties of a social life reshaped by digital innovation and the explosion of social media.

The bar was once Italy’s second living room, the place to read the newspaper, listen to music, play cards or billiards, before the arrival of slot machines or a place where to watch TV. That side of Italy is gone. For a while now, TV series are watched at home, conversations have moved to Facebook and Instagram, and, above all, revenue from coffee, pastries and aperitifs is often no longer enough to cover the cost of running a business.

That is one way to sum up a report presented by Fipe-Confcommercio, Italy’s leading National Business Association. The study examines business demographics over the past decade, from 2015 to 2025, charting both successes and struggles.

The most striking figure: 22,300 bars have disappeared across Italy.

There is an important factor, however, it is not necessarily outright business closures, but rather the result of a slow and seemingly inevitable transformation driven by changing customer’s needs. Restaurants and Takeout shops have taken their place, with effects that are not always positive. Hence the overall decline, accounting for all food-and-beverage businesses, including ice cream shops, it is reduced to fewer than 10,000 establishments. The sector nonetheless remains an essential local presence across the country: just 162 of Italy’s roughly 7,900 municipalities have no such business at all.

Tourism — both established and emerging — has not been enough to save Italy’s bars. The numbers collected by Confcommercio and analyzed by the Tagliacarne Research Center tell the story. More than 1,000 bars have disappeared in Rome, a decline of more than one-fifth in a decade.

Turin and Trieste have seen even sharper declines, respectively 22.1% and 23.4%, respectively. The islands are no exception: Cagliari has lost 20.8% of its bars, Palermo 19.6%.

Buck¬ing the broader trend, parts of southern Italy are moving in the opposite direction: among provincial capitals, the figures remain positive in Naples (2.2%) and Potenza (2.3%). To put it bluntly, why are bars still on the rise in cities across the South while their numbers are declining in the North?

“The market in the northern regions is more mature, while in the South, it is still seen as a form of self-employment in an area where unemployment remains very high,” says Luciano Sbraga, director of the Tagliacarne Research Center.

The trend is even clearer when all businesses in the sector are kept in consideration. Naples tops the ranking for net growth, with a boom of 704 new establishments, an increase of 19.7%, followed by Palermo, with 163 new establishments (+8.7%); Bari, with 76 (+5.8%); and Taranto, with 71 (+10.6%). The figures confirm that the restaurant business remains a source of employment and economic development in the South.

But don’t call it a “food factory.”

“This study debunks the myth that stores are disappearing from historic city centers only to make way for restaurants,” Sbraga says. “Rather, restaurants are compensating for the gradual disappearance of bars without fundamentally changing the mix of services available to residents and tourists.”

What is more worrying, he says, is the growth of takeout businesses — food meant to be consumed elsewhere.

From a business standpoint, the model is certainly efficient: minimal staffing, limited space and almost no need to manage waste because virtually everything is shifted outside - the food, of course, but often also the noise and the disruptions that have long fueled debate over malamovida, Italy’s late-night nightlife problems.

“The study focused on how the sector is evolving in the historic centers of large and midsize cities, where we are seeing trends that now demand attention,” says Lino Enrico Stoppani, president of Fipe-Confcommercio. “In these areas, market forces have often led to an excessive concentration of businesses and the growth of more informal forms of dining, where the absence of table service and extremely limited space have become the strengths of the business model. The answer lies in the growing impact of significant externalities.”

The study notes that aggressive business models focused primarily on selling alcoholic

cheap drinks, are fueling alcohol abuse and urban deterioration at the expense of residents and business owners.

“We need to take back control of our cities and ensure orderly commercial development, especially in the most troubled areas, by curbing the unchecked proliferation of business models that undermine the character of our historic centers,” Stoppani says. “Allowing businesses to open without restrictions and then imposing ordinances to limit their operations is a cure worse than the disease.”