It is Tuesday evening and, for the first time in days, it appears it will not rain in Bucharest. This, of course, makes waiters in bars and restaurants in Bucharest’s old town happy. Now, they are busy waiting on clients, who have filled all the outdoor restaurants, although it is not a weekend.

”Who do I ask for a drink around here?,” asks a young woman who has just joined acquaintances at a table. ”Me,” says a guy at the table, getting up and stepping into the bar. ”I didn’t know he was a waiter here,” says the young woman, and the explanation comes promptly from another person at the table: ”He doesn’t just wait tables here, he owns the bar with a few of his friends.” The four friends knew one another beforehand – their common passion for motorcycles in fact brought them together.

”One spring day we were passing by in the street and we sensed there was money to be made here. So we decided we would set up a motorcycle bar,” recounts Giani Manta (35), one of the four owners of the Jaya Café, which opened in mid-May on Smardan Street. Although none of them had previously had any experience in the field, the decision was very easy to make. ”I had just come back after eight months in Tibet. I went there to recover after 11 years of corporate grind,” says Emil Spataru (35), referring to the time he spent working for the formerly state-held operator Romtelecom.

He is the only one who was an employee before; Giani Manta has a constructions company and a clothing store, and Mihai Sorin, another shareholder, has a real estate agency. It is not uncommon for bar or restaurant owners in the old centre to moonlight as waiters. The number of places has more than doubled compared with last year, with over 50 bars and restaurants located in the area. Further openings are expected before the cold weather sets in. ”We are hoping to make new openings by the end of the summer,” says Vasi Andreica, developer of the two Coffee Store coffee shops and importer of Moak coffee in Romania.