Pandoro closing its three Wellington cafes today, the latest in a string of hospitality closures

Wellington’s three Pandoro cafes will today close their doors for the last time after 28 years in business.

Owner Tony Beazley said it’s a sad day for the company having to lay off more than 20 staff across their Willis St, Allan St, and Woodward St stores.

Beazley blames the struggling local economy with more people working from home and moves by Wellington City Council to install cycleways and bus lanes, removing car parking for customers.

He said they had recently tried to sell the business without success, leading to the difficult decision to shut up shop.

The artisan bakery had to shut down its wholesale operation last year to focus on the cafe trade, Beazley said.

Pandoro is closing its three Wellington cafes today. Photo / Ethan Manera

It’s the latest in a series of retail and hospitality closures in the capital, with eight stores either closing or announcing their closure this week alone.

Concord restaurant closed last weekend, and Egmont Eatery announced on Wednesday it would be closing at the end of this month, leaving 15 people without jobs.

The deli and diner posted to social media, saying the current economic climate had created huge challenges.

Wellington florist Yvette Edwards is closing her store after seven years on Tory St. Clothing stores Service Depot and Caughley have also announced their closures, both located in central Wellington.

Last month, Courtenay Place bars Rubix and SugarWoods closed after being put in liquidation, with declining foot traffic in the city cited as one factor.

Kris Bartley, the owner of Sweet Release cafe in the city, last week said she had the worst day of sales in her 10 years in business.

“People just don’t have money. People who do are saving their money in case they lose their jobs, which is totally fair.”

Her customers were usually working professionals and students, but public sector job cuts had hit hard, and some customers had also expressed concerns about safety in Manners St where the cafe was situated, she said.

In a post on social media yesterday, she said sales had been the second lowest in the past 10 years. She put the slight improvement down to the launch of a new menu that people had specifically come in to try.

Flight Coffee managing director Richard Corney believes the current climate in hospitality is worse than it was during the pandemic. In an earlier interview with NZME, he said “it’s very grim at the moment”, with the company 25% below its expectations in July.

Corney argues consumers should be paying more for their daily coffee as a way to support struggling businesses, saying if the price of a cup of coffee increased at the rate of operating costs, they should be charging $8 a cup.

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He said the current climate was representative of similar times in 2008 – when the world was in the midst of a financial crisis.

“It’s a near-perfect storm at the moment,” he added, saying the impact of public sector job losses on the industry has been acute.

“You’ve got the cost of living, you’ve got various other pressures with higher interest rates and people being very conscious of discretionary spending. For hospitality, it’s culminating in ... people just not spending like they used to.”

Ethan Manera is a multimedia journalist based in Wellington. He joined NZME in 2023 and is interested in politics, local issues and the public service. Ethan is always on the lookout for a story and can be emailed at ethan.manera@nzme.co.nz or messaged on X (formerly Twitter) via the handle @ethanjmanera.