Over 3,000 customers with tickets for bankrupt Dinner Train will be left empty-handed 

A total of 3,420 customers have been left behind with a ticket that is now worthless for the bankrupt company Dinner Train. This is stated in the first bankruptcy report about the company that offered luxury dinners on trains. Dinner Train went bankrupt at the end of August after many canceled trips. The company is leaving behind a debt of over 1.2 million euros.

A significant portion of that debt consists of dinner tickets worth almost 870,000 euros combined. The bankruptcy administrator also wrote that suppliers were still owed money from the company from Oisterwijk. These claims amount to 300,000 euros, but that fee could still rise because not all suppliers have reported their debts yet. The Tax Authority is also still owed money.

Bankruptcy administrator Fred Froger is investigating the exact cause of the bankruptcy but has already written that the company had significant financial problems due to the coronavirus pandemic and the energy crisis that followed Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The dinners on the trains could not continue during the lockdown, and the electricity needed to run them became very expensive in 2022. Dinner Train could not include these costs in the fees for customers who had already bought a ticket.

In the years that followed, trains regularly lost power due to technical issues, resulting in a significant decrease in reservations. In the end, the board itself filed for bankruptcy.

There is also a matter of determining compensation due to workers. Seven Dinner Train employees lost their jobs because of the bankruptcy, but the company also had hired multiple people as independent contractors.

Several of them are now accusing the bankrupt company of forcing them into bogus freelance constructions. They say that Dutch law actually dictates that they should should be considered direct employees who were disguised as independent contractors, a construction which can save companies money which would have been due for payroll taxes.

In bankruptcy cases, social benefits agency UWV typically continues to pay employees for several weeks after a bankruptcy. However, independent contractors and freelancers do not receive this payment.

The bankruptcy report did not state how many self-employed people felt that they were falsely considered self-employed. Trade union FNV previously reported that Dinner Train worked with approximately 50 temporary workers.