Gabor Mate is Managing Director at Katona Jozsef Theatre, Budapest, Hungary
Many nations in the world including Hungarians often struggle to find the right balance between tradition and innovation. Our theatre, now exactly 30 years old, decided to put on a brave, new face with our redesigned theatre front and café. But it is not only the exterior that changed. We have also become the first cafeteria in the country and perhaps in the whole of Europe that accepts only electronic payments during regular daily business hours of 9 a.m. to 6 p.m.
Some might think that the dethronement of ‘King Cash’ has been a dramatic move from us in a country where the payment environment is still dominated largely by notes and coins. Surely, operating a cashless retail unit of any kind is not without any risk, but we strongly believe that our audience will be able to identify with this innovative concept and see our philosophy behind it. In fact when doing a survey amongst our customers, nearly 80 % of them said that they would be prepared to drop cash and to go for electronic payments!
For us as a leading contemporary playhouse, it seemed pretty natural to find new ways of doing things and working with MasterCard has given us the idea that seems so obvious now: Why not have a place without the use of cash? It is brave and unusual. It will make people think! After all this is what we do every night on stage!
When you enter this new space, be prepared that you might be engaged in some passionate conversations. Can we live without the use of cash? Can we make a better world by using less cash?
While it may not be our task as a theatre to answer these questions we are glad that we can start a conversation towards something that we believe is the future.