December the 18th, 2022 - Cafe culture is a big deal in Croatia, from business meetings to concluding contracts to getting together with the neighbours to gossip about other neighbours, it's more or less all done over a (usually) very tiny cup of coffee that one somehow manages to make last for three hours. The sight of kuna and lipa coins left on tables on top of receipts is also common, but how will that sight look following Croatian Eurozone membership?
Croatia is set to scrap the kuna and adopt the bloc's single currency in just two weeks, and there are already issues arising surrounding cash, how to get it, and how to avoid getting stuck with large denominations of euros in cash that you actually can't spend anywhere.
As Poslovni Dnevnik writes, the changing of the national currency is now very much in full swing and many people are already ready to carry out their business operations with the new currency as early as today. However, Dnevnik Nova TV reports that some are worried that there could still be some problems in the first days following the euro's adoption here.
When the first customer wants to come and pay for a coffee in euros in the new year following Croatian Eurozone membership, restaurant owner Franz Letica says he will definitely be ready. He says that he could do business in euros today if it was necessary.
"As far as catering and hospitality in general is concerned, I guess our sector was born ready because we're used to constantly introducing something new and seeing things change at the last minute, so that's normal for us," says Letica.
However, some people are worried about the possibility that in those first days of Croatian Eurozone membership, before there is much money in circulation, customers will come to them trying to pay for items with large denominations of 50 or 100 euros. After they return the rest, they wonder if they will have enough money to return any change to others.
Franz has his own solution for that. He says that it is unacceptable that 100-euro notes should ever be accepted for coffee, and he cites Germany as an example: "You cannot buy bread in a store with a 200 or 500 euro note, you must be prepared and take small change with you."
The Croatian National Bank says that the law does not stipulate whether or not a restaurant or shop or cafe owner or indeed anyone else can refuse an excessively large banknote in exchange for goods or services being sold or rendered.
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