"All of that is because of high utility bills. While we used to pay about 600,000 forints ($1,500) for lighting and heating per month, now [we have to pay] more than 2 million forints. Only the cafe on the first floor will continue to work and only as a grab-and-go venue. Because sometimes people sit for a very long time and order little; that’s not profitable for us," an employee of the Ester cafe said.
"Will we close? It's a good question. To be honest, we don't even take orders for cakes for January, nothing is clear now. We hope we'll learn something in the next two weeks," one of them said.
"Due to the unfavorable impact of the economic situation on the catering industry - rising energy and raw material prices, reduced tourism and the number of guests - we have closed our coffee shop," the venue announced in late November.