Brace yourself: pizza prices will skyrocket in Hungary!

Hungarian restaurants and pizza places are in despair because of the soaring energy prices and have no idea what they will do during autumn and winter. Some lower the quality of their ingredients and change recipes to save money, but price rises seem inevitable. You cannot buy a pizza below HUF  3,000 now (EUR 7.5), but that might soon change to HUF 4,000 (EUR 10). That would be a 33 percent increase.

According to Pénzcentrum, apart from baths, hotels and cultural institutions, even restaurants must close temporarily or permanently because of the energy crisis. That is the third big challenge for the sector after the coronavirus pandemic and the labour shortage in just a couple of years. The question is whether people will pay considerably higher prices if the restaurants, including some pizza places, do the inevitable.

Based on a May gastro survey, the favourite international food of Hungarians is pizza. 42.3 percent said they would prefer that. Orsolya Hartyányi, the business development leader of Wolt Hungary, said residents of Budapest order thousands of pizzas each day.

Pénzcentrum argues that it is rare to find a restaurant offering pizza for less than EUR 7.5 in Hungary. As a result, fewer people can afford to eat that delicacy, so the number of closing pizza places is increasing. Pizza Monkey, a restaurant in Szeged, said their gas bill would be 8-9 times higher than before from 1 September.