Halifax Restaurant Suddenly Closes, Citing Higher Costs
HALIFAX–Loyal customers of Budapest Bistro were in for a sad surprise when they tried to get a meal on Monday. A typed note, posted on the door at Washmill Lake Drive, read that the bistro was closed.
“Due to the rising cost of doing business, we have made the tough decision to close effective immediately,” the short note read, in part.
The note was signed by Jan Wicha and his wife Helen, the former owners of Budapest Bistro. In 2022, they sold the bistro to a numbered Montreal company. But for the past year, the couple stayed on to help operate the restaurant. Jan Wicha said he didn’t have the go ahead to reveal the numbered company or the identity of the new owner.
Wicha has been in the restaurant business for more than 40 years. He first opened Pino’s Restaurant in Halifax back in the 1970’s. Now he is saying that the current business model is broken. It’s not working in terms of finding reliable labour, and the cost of food is too high to pass on the customers. Wicha says some ingredients cost 40 per cent more than they did just a few years ago.
“We weren’t even trying to be a fine dining establishment. We’re more of a bistro, but I find that the business model is broken for restaurants completely,” said Wicha. “That’s including trying to get proper staff…the attitude has completely changed. If they don’t feel like coming in, it’s a ‘to hell with you,’ (attitude). Then the food prices are absolutely out of line.”
“Then we got hit in April. We had an increase in payroll (with minimum wage going up), increase in food and liquor, increase in rent. We just have no way of passing it on to the customers. We’re already at the limit of what’s reasonable (prices) for food.”
The Budapest Bistro has had several struggles during its four-year existence. It opened in October of 2019 and was shutdown by the pandemic a few months later. Wicha took on $140,000 in pandemic debt to keep the business afloat, including $40,000 in CEBA loans.
“And I think I put another $50,000-$60,000 just for my own cash,” said Wicha. It was very, very difficult because I didn’t get any government help outside of the CEBA loans, until the next batch of (pandemic) closings.”
Wicha is no stranger to hardship. As a child in 1968, he and his family fled Czechoslovakia just as the Warsaw Pact Invasion, led by the Soviets, was beginning.
“We were invaded by Russia. That’s why I’m watching the Ukraine situation. It’s pretty much the same thing they’re going through…” Said Wicha.
“We were attacked by Warsaw countries… we were just children, me and my two brothers. So, we escaped on a train to Austria last minute; one of the last trains leaving. And my father worked overseas those days. So, we were able to live in Egypt for a year, Beirut for a while, and Germany.”
The biggest obstacle for the Budapest Bistro would come in June of 2022, when it lost their restaurant equipment. Wicha claims there was a legal dispute over how much money was owed for the leasing of the equipment. He wishes, in hindsight, that he stuck to his plan to but the equipment outright.
“When I started the business, I wanted to buy all my equipment straight out, but got talked into leasing equipment, which was the worst thing in my life,” he said. “I’ve never leased anything; maybe a car I leased once, but the payments for the leasing were close to $5,000 a month, which is humongous.”
Eventually, says Wicha, the leasing company took back the equipment over the dispute. But the bistro was only closed for a month. That’s when the mystery owner from Montreal came in willing to buy the place.
“A company out of Montreal was interested in the name and the product and everything …It must have been an owner of this company from Montreal that ate in my restaurant and heard what was going on…so they put in money to buy the exact same equipment and we got opened in less than a month like nothing happened.”
But now, due to the various challenges facing the restaurant industry, Wicha says the restaurant is closing. Ironically, the last day of Budapest Bistro was its busiest ever.
“Everything worked reasonably well, but the volume… just wasn’t there for (the new owner) to have an appetite to go any further. So they made the deal with the landlord to shut down May 1, and I didn’t find out until like May 10.”
“I persuaded him to stay open until May 14, just to get through Mother’s Day because we had close to 200 reservations on Mother’s Day. It would’ve been disastrous for all these people trying to find places to eat.”
Derek Montague is a Huddle reporter in Halifax. Send him your feedback and story ideas: [email protected].