The Higher Administrative Court of the Saarland has prohibited a hybrid branch of an optician's business that is not registered in the Register of Craftsmen (Ref.: 1 B 141/25 of 30 January 2026).

The optician company operates a hybrid optician business that combines online retail for prescription glasses with bricks-and-mortar „hybrid shops“. Customers are advised in these branches and their lenses are determined (refraction determination). However, this is not done on site, but by a master optician based in Bayreuth who connects to the shop via a camera. As the „hybrid branch“ does not carry out any significant optician activities on site, the company is of the opinion that it does not constitute the operation of a craft requiring a licence and therefore does not need to be entered in the register of craftsmen.

However, the OVG and the lower court took a different view: the decisive factor for the refraction determination, which is an essential activity of the optician's trade, is that the customer is on site. The customer is an integral part of the measurement. Therefore, the trade also takes place in the shop. In addition, there was a risk that the visual acuity would not be correctly determined by the remote measurement, according to the court.