Despite its recent decision to pull out of the Romanian and Slovak markets, and disappointing results in the Czech Republic, Coffeeheaven CEO Richard Worthington couldn’t be more upbeat about his chances in Hungary.

“We see Hungary as a very interesting market for us,” he says over the phone from his office in Poland. “We’re very pleased with the results so far.”

The coffee chain entered the country in late 2007 with an outlet at Budapest’s Arena Plaza, and since then has opened two additional locations closer to the center in District V and VI. In April, the brand will open its most high-profile location yet, in a choice corner location on Fashion Street. Worthington adds that despite the economic downturn, several more locations are planned to open in the next couple years.

Coffeeheaven’s strong performance in Hungary and its home base of Poland, where it will have 60 cafés by the end of the month, is in stark contrast to the neighboring markets of Romania and Slovakia. In the fall, the company decided to pull out of those countries due to the “reduced potential of [the] markets,” according to an interim report published in November.

Worthington says in Romania, where Coffeeheaven operated one outlet in Bucharest’s Băneasa Shopping City, part of the problem was lack of decent infrastructure. He says it can take roughly two hours to get to the mall from the city center, a trip that doesn’t favor regular patronage. And with the financial crisis putting a stop to the construction of any new shopping centers for the time being, Worthington says there wasn’t a future for Coffeeheaven in the country. “We’ll be back”, but for now we don’t think it’s the right market for us.”

Coffeeheaven still operates in two mall locations in Bratislava, but will shut those down once the sale of the businesses can be finalized. Worthington claims the economic growth that the company had expected in Slovakia just wasn’t happening, with much of the investment in the region heading instead to Vienna.

The coffee chain is also planning to close four coffee shops in the Czech Republic, most notably a site on luxury shopping street Pařížská in Prague and a shoebox location in the Muzeum metro station on Wenceslas Square, which opened in late 2007. “It was an experiment that just didn’t work,” says Worthington of the metro location.

Still, he’s confident that Coffeeheaven can carve out a niche for itself in Hungary, even while facing competition from the likes of California Coffee Company and the newly arrived Costa Coffee. The British chain opened its first coffee shop in January at Astoria in Budapest, and plans to open a second outlet at the corner of Andrássy and Bajcsy-Zsilinszky in the coming months, in a space that had been expected to go to Starbucks. Edina Charker, Costa’s European marketing manager, says there are a few more cafés in the pipeline for this year, and adds that the plan is first to focus on the large Budapest market before expanding to regional cities in the coming years.

“We have been looking at Hungary for quite some time,” says Charker. Costa was able to sign with its Hungarian franchise partner Lapker last year, part of the Lagardère Group. Through Lagardère, Costa also gained access to the Slovak and Czech markets, opening its first Czech location at Prague’s Palác Flóra shopping center in November.