Coffee shops for the masses

Photo by Marta Dzedyshko from Pexels

When did coffee shops become popular? Starbucks is full of screaming teens, looking like they ought to be in McDonalds, flicking fries around. In my day (not that long ago really) you went into coffee shops to avoid kids. Certainly when I was young, coffee and tea were deeply unfashionable. I only started drinking them when I thought I should be acting more grown up. So what has changed? Apart from a few other reasons, Starbucks and their rivals have saturated the market now so that there just aren’t any other options left. The traditional notion of the high street tea shop or café is now endangered. 

So why has the new wave of coffee shops been so successful? Fashion, most probably is the main reason. The 90’s brought about the current notion of selling the ‘lifestyle’ through consumer products. Proper coffee, newly liberated from its masters in Italy, became one of the many products which had formerly been seen as ‘high end’ that could now be targeted at the mainstream. Just as everyone can pick up off-the-shelf ‘designer’ clothes nowadays, anyone can get themselves an Italian style cappuccino. Such things are now commoditised. People don’t mind paying nearly £2.50 a mug because they are now just used to it. Furthermore, there just isn’t anything to compare it with anymore. 

The funny thing about coffee shops’ rise to prominence is that historically they have been a quite different sort of place. 100 or more years ago, they existed (at least in Europe) as dens of activity for the creatives of the time. The poets, the writers, the painters all frequented ‘coffee houses’ for like-minded company and the mental boost provided by the coffee. Now of course coffee shops are for the masses whether they subscribe to the lifestyle (nonsense) premise or not. Not only that, but a whole generation are growing up coffee drinkers.