A mere week ago one of the 11 branches of Tomoca Coffee,  this one located in Piassa, had hundreds of people walk through its doors every day. But this is no longer the case.

Following the rising number of people testing positive for the Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) and tighter health guidelines that are issued from authorities, the famous coffee roasting company had to close its doors for the first time since its opening almost seven decades ago.

When Tomoca opened its first shop in Ethiopia in 1953, people were only used to drinking coffee at their houses. Due to this trend, it took the company eight years to branch out until residents developed the habit of drinking coffee outside of their homes.

Typically, the coffee shop operates 11 branches in Addis Abeba and one in Bishoftu (Debre Zeit) and serves hundreds of customers a day, but that all changed last week.

On the afternoon of Tuesday, March 31, 2020, the two-storey dilapidated building in Piassa, home to Ethiopia’s first coffee shop, was empty. The sidewalk on the street outside is also mostly vacant. A few pedestrians pass every now and then.

The building where the coffee shop was first opened is now boarded up with shutters except for one window on the second floor.

The long-term plan involves opening up 100 branches over a 10-year time frame, according to Kiroubel Seyoum, COO of the company.

However, the management of the shop closed all of the branches as of March 28, 2020, as a contribution to stopping the spread of the virus. Before deciding to temporarily close the business, the managers let the staff work in shifts.

Essential personnel like security and delivery staff are still working, while the rest have been told to stay at home for the coming two weeks and wait this out.

Though the coffee shop roasts, packs and supplies coffee to supermarkets, and its coffee exports contribute close to 10pc of its overall revenue, its main customers are local residents of the capital.

The company spends over two million Birr a month on employee wages for its 300 direct and 500 indirect workers and another two million Birr for monthly rent payments. Though operations have ceased almost completely at the moment, its management is hopeful.

"We have no plans to lay off employees, and we're hopeful that we'll be back in business in two to three weeks," Kiroubel said.

Tomoca Coffee has since its closure decided it will open its branches in phases starting Monday, April 6,2020, acording to Kiroubel.

The spread of the virus, which has reached 35 individuals within three weeks, hit most of the of businesses in the country hard including the cafes and restaurants, which have been opening rapidly for the past couple of years.

The Addis Abeba Trade Bureau has given licenses to 388 new restaurants and 751 cafes just this year alone, bringing the total number of restaurants and cafes to 64,114 and 28,981 respectively.

Another long-standing business contemplating the same move as Tomoca is La Parisienne, one of the chain cafes in the capital, which has been in business since 1997. Started with a capital of 100,000 Br by a family of six, the cafe had its first branch at Olympia and now has a total of six branches across the city.

The cafe, famous for its croissants and boasting 220 employees and an annual turnover reaching up to 30 million Br, is facing a major decision. The café normally prints out close to 1,000 receipts a day, but as of late business has been slow.

"We barely print out 30 nowadays," says Yetna Teferi, one of the owners. "We're ready to close the shop."

The establishment has been operating at a loss for some time, and the only reason it is still open is that the owners have not been forced yet and didn't want to add to the confusion in the city, according to Yetna.

"However, given the situation," said Yetna, "that'll will likely change in the coming few days."

All the employees in the café are permanent, and the decision is to keep them for as long as it can, according to the owners, who also plan to close for a couple of weeks and take it from there. Most of the staff have taken their annual leave.

"We just have to pay them and see what happens in a few weeks," he said. "They have been working here a long time, and we don’t intend to disband them and restart the whole hiring process again in a month or so when we re-open."

If the company lays off its employees, it could possibly pay for up to seven months worth of salary to a single employee, summing up compensation and severance pay, according to the co-owner, who hopes that the government will provide support.

The four-year-old company Garden of Coffee is another victim of the current situation. It opened up its first branch of Café-Roasteries in the Bole Japan area, consuming up to 10 million Br in capital for its cafe, bathrooms, shower and changing rooms for staff and international roll-out. The investment also includes the machinery for production and packaging of their coffee, tefftastic chips and snacks that are made from teff.

The company has 180 employees including at its factory located in Torhailoch and had planned on expanding before the onset of COVID-19 in the country, according to its owner Bethlehem Tilahun.

It plans to open a new branch in Unity Park and eventually at over 100 new locations across China. An initial trial toward bigger exports, however, has come to a grinding halt, since the cafe has shut down all its branches and been forced to let go of all its employees.