Daily Times

The traditional French cafe where people of all stripes have customarily met is becoming a rare sight in many villages, but a man with a van — and a liquor licence — is making the rounds to help revive rural socialising.

On a brisk recent Friday, Sebastien Cherrier, a 44-year-old former educational caseworker, was serving drinks and bonhomie from the back of his “Bar Truck” in Villequiers, population 483.

More than a dozen patrons were gathered under the pop-up gazebo installed behind the van’s open back doors, where Cherrier sat behind a customised oak counter donated by a woodworker.

“The last cafe here closed a little over a year ago, but as recently as 1985 we still had four,” said Villequiers mayor Pascal Mereau, who is also a teacher in the village. “All we have left is one business that’s a grocer, bar, and guestroom,” he said.

Mereau and other residents see Cherrier’s initiative as a chance to reknit a civil fabric that’s fraying as more people leave for bigger cities, prompting businesses to close and public services to dwindle. The trend has contributed to a growing rift between Paris and other prosperous urban or tourist centres on the one side and those in the picturesque yet increasingly isolated countryside on the other. The issue has received close scrutiny in recent months during a revolt by “yellow vest” demonstrators in rural and small-town France who have blocked roads nationwide in a protest against President Emmanuel Macron. France had some 200,000 cafes in 1960, often serving as the social centre of gravity for communities and neighbourhoods around the country.

By 2015, that number had fallen to just 36,000, with most closures in rural areas, according to a 2017 report from the France Boissons industry body and the CREDOC consumer studies agency.

“Before, cafes allowed you to meet people. I had to come to the Bar Truck to really get to know my neighbours,” said Oliver, a craftsman in his 50s in Villequiers. “Until now it was just ‘good morning’ or ‘good night’,” he said.

Published in Daily Times, March 15^th 2019.