Rated
Feb 27 2009
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1 review
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business, financial, trading, forex
• blogspot.com
PRAGUE -- The owner of some of the Czech capital's chic restaurants unveiled a novel approach this week to lure business clients to one of his upscale dining rooms: let diners pay what they like.
The owner, Sanjiv Suri, hopes executives will not want to appear cheap to their guests when presented with a blank check after dining at the lunch buffet, laden with grilled vegetables instead of foie gras. Even if they pay nothing, he added, they will almost certainly return as paying customers.
"During an economic crisis you need to be creative," said Mr. Suri, sipping pinot noir in a half-empty dining room.
Breaching the old adage that there is "no such thing as a free lunch" is just the latest tell-tale sign that the financial crisis has reached even a relatively resilient economy like the Czech Republic's. As exports to Western Europe -- its biggest market -- begin to falter, companies are scaling back. Unemployment is starting to rise, hitting 6.8 percent last month, versus 6 percent a year earlier. The country's gross domestic product is expected to contract by about 0.3 percent in 2009, the Czech National Bank said this week, after growing about 4 percent in 2008.