Who mentioned training!

To be able to serve alcohol in the chambre d’hôte we need a permis d’exploitation. It’s effectively an alcohol license. To obtain it one of us needs to complete some training. We decided, as I think my attention span is probably longer, that I would take it. Fortunately though, it was not going to be in French, as Brian had found a company called Aventum who provide the training in English, and better still it is delivered via Zoom. It’s a total of 8 hours of training, delivered in one day, which I have to say was a bit of a shock to my system! I had forgotten what it was like to sit in front of a laptop for 8 hours. My back was killing me at the end of it, through just lack of activity, I had forgotten what that was like. To think just a year ago I would probably sit and work for longer than that every day.

That said, it was a really interesting course, and we learnt lots of useful information. As it was a Zoom session Brian was also able to sit and listen to the presentations, which were well considered and made relevant to each persons type of business. I have come away with a few actions, a couple more forms to complete and a test I need to complete tomorrow online. Once I’ve done this, our permis will be submitted and will take 15 days to be sanctioned. The permis is actually for the premises and is valid for ten years. I think the idea of providing relevant industry training for people, either taking on new businesses, or starting up a new business, is a great support function and ensures a minimum level of knowledge is understood by the people working in that industry. We both certainly feel more confident that we know what is required of us from the French authorities in running a Chambre d’hôte and being authorised to serve alcohol.