Crowds gathered outside Bewley's Cafe on Dublin's Grafton Street today in a last-ditch attempt to stop it closing its doors forever.
But Mr Paul Quilligan, a Dublin-based architect, who is master-minding a plot to keep the city's two favourite coffee-houses open, vowed this was only the beginning.
"The support will give us a platform to go to Government, which we have in train at the moment," Mr Quilligan said.
"This first thing is just to get public support. We are really just taking the cork off the bottle, because there is an enormous amount of sentiment."
The Campbell Bewley Group has said that due to "deeply serious financial pressures" it will close the doors on its flagship 1927 Grafton Street store and its Westmoreland Street cafe, which has stood on the site since 1896, on November 30th.
A spokesman for the company said the cafes will lose about €2 million this year alone.
"The rents, insurance, rates, employment and food costs on what is now known to be the fifth most expensive street in the world are also quite simply, crippling," he said.
However, some of the city's residents and visitors are not willing to let their traditional haunt go without a fight.