Coffee shops are a bit of an enigma to me. I don’t think anyone actually wants to be in one. I know I certainly don’t, which makes me ponder then when we pay so much for something as innocuous as coffee. I have next to me a £3 mug of the stuff, which is all very well, if not a little too hot and thus has a slight scalded taste, but at home that would cost about 20p, yet we’re willing to pay such a premium for somewhere we don’t actually want to be. And yet, coffee shops are the fastest growing retail opportunity in the UK right now, far outstripping the rate in which pubs are closing.
So what do I mean when I say nobody actually wants to be at one. They’re merely a conduit for something else, a forum, a channel. Call it what you will, it’s like nobody wants to be in a pub I suppose, the beer is over-priced, you’ve got to put up with drunken idiots (and they’re just the people you’re there to meet) and yet we flock to these institutions.
I take faith therefore that we endure these lukewarm environments in order to foster our relationships. In an age of all-too digital interconnectedness, here we are still meeting up, laughing and sharing stories. You hear a constant stream of facts like teenage pregnancies are falling because they can’t diddle one another through their phones. But I look around here, and see people having a good time. It makes me all positive inside, which is a bonus given I’m only here to waste time between meetings…