“We are trying to survive,” says Aline Tserunian, the owner of Sohmi. “Unfortunately I had to fire a lot of people. I had six employees, but now I only have one. ”
The neighbours are also having a hard time. Jack Bean has around fifteen customers a day. “We also have a delivery service. Sometimes it can be a bit busier, but that’s about it,” says psychology student Manana Natsvlishvili. Since the crisis she has been running her shift on her own. “There used to be the three of us.”
Currently HAS Kebab has eighty to a hundred customers a day, while before the corona crisis they had around four hundred customers. “We can barely keep our head above water,” says owner Fikret Egemen. “But we are working very hard to make ends meet.”
Student Sanne Vollenberg works at Starbucks and has been running fewer shifts since the crisis. Before the crisis she worked 16 hours a week, but nowadays she serves coffee for about 8 hours in a week. Whether she can run more shifts in the future? “Well, of course, the development depends very much on the university’s policy. So I still have to wait and see how it goes.”
