CAFE CULTURE
Why Consumers are Choosing Cafes
They’re cheaper. They’re more fun. They’re closer to home. They have better coffee. More interesting people go there…. Read on to find out why cafés are where it’s at.
By Nadia Alkahzrajie
As the trend for decreasing restaurant portions at increasing prices began to verge on parody, cafes were quietly going from strength to strength. Making the most of lower overheads and longer opening hours, cafes have started serving better quality food at competitive prices. Informal and inexpensive, cafes offer the modern consumer greater flexibility. Whether you want to grab a coffee and dash, or snack over your laptop, cafes offer us options.
You can suit yourself in cafes. There’s no pressure to dress up or to eat specific meals at set times – if you want breakfast at three pm, that’s no problem. All those issues of etiquette, from tipping staff to standing on ceremony, seem less relevant in cafes, where we’re at liberty to act more naturally and at ease.
We can gossip with friends without worrying about the next booking, or while away the hours on a rainy day with a string of lattes and a good book. We can people watch, day dream, eavesdrop and write slightly distracted poetry. We can tuck our feet up and spread ourselves out, listen to music, do a crossword and read the paper.
Sandwiches, pies, scrambled eggs, jacket potatoes, burgers, lemon coconut cakes, chocolate brownies, cinnamon bagels, things on toast…. eating in a café is like being on holiday. From the traditional greasy spoon to your organic health food or licensed Parisian, a growing number of cafes specialise in doing their ‘thing’ really well, and if the food isn’t always guaranteed to be homemade, it’s at least likely to be homely.
The best cafes have their own identity; it’s amazing how much of an antidote lime-green walls and a hotchpotch of crockery can be to all those ‘off-white’ restaurant interiors. Suits, trackies, gym shorts, cashmere and studded black leather: a good café takes its life and soul from all walks of life.
Cafes are intimate and familiar. They provide us with a haven amongst the crowd and help build a sense of community. We don’t all have backyards or balconies or a local park to feel safe in, not to mention the need to take refuge from the British weather at short notice. We need cafes as our meeting places, our ‘pubs’, our common rooms, our village squares – our homes away from home where we can do our own thing without being alone.
YOUR TURN
Who else loves a good café? Find recommended cafes on our data base. Tell us about your favourites, or be brutally honest about a bad one. Spill the beans now. The more we share our café culture, the more it will grow.