Fresh Cup Magazine, providing specialty coffee and tea professionals with unique insight into the trends, ideas, products and people that shape their world.
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T elevision loves coffeehouses. From Frasier Crane's Café Nervosa and The Coffee Shop of "Sex and the City" to Central Perk in "Friends" and Café Jacques of "Will & Grace," coffeehouses have been all over network and cable programming for years. From a dramatic standpoint, it makes sense. The specialty coffeehouse is a sign of the times—an instant signifier of class and context that helps define characters as young or old, hip or lame, angry or Zen, Ross or Rachel. But you'll notice that none of these phony stage- set cafés actually has a tele- vision. In fact, the absence of the tube might be the most realistic aspect of TV coffeehouses. Something about television seems incompatible with the cof- feehouse vibe and the phi- losophy of specialty. The TV is more at home in a sports bar, pub or family restaurant chain than in an espresso bar. But is this knee-jerk disaffection for televi- sion really fair? Is it wise? Perhaps we are being elitist or just plain short-sight- ed. Maybe we are letting our aversion to commer- cial programming blind us to attractive commercial opportunities lurking with- in other expressions of this technology. Is there a place for a screen in your shop? THE PUBLIC LIVING ROOM Only a tourist who has tried to order an espresso in an Italian coffee bar during a World Cup qualifier involving Italy can truly appreciate the power of TV. Cafés in the birthplace of espresso are often boisterous places, joined to bars or hotels or restau- rants, blurring the lines not only between these services but also between home and away. As Tracy Allen of Kansas City, Mo.-based Brewed Behavior puts it, "In Europe, the café is an extension of the living room." Marianne Nanou, a former editor-in-chief of Coffee & Spirits and Food & Wine Magazine in Athens, Greece, says televisions in that country can be found in sports cafés, coffeehouses and places where men congregate to hash out ideas. "The old-fashioned cof- feehouses—kafeneia—are places where elderly, mostly retired men often have long discussions about politics, and they might Only a tourist who has tried to order an espresso in an Italian coffee bar during a World Cup qualifier involving Italy can truly appreciate the power of TV. get quite passionate about it. TV provides them with stimuli to have long debates over issues." But in Greece's tumultuous past several years, the coffeehouse has become less a place of confrontation and more an oasis of escape. "People have less disposable income," Nanou says. "When they choose to go to a café instead of drink coffee at home, they want to have a pleasurable experience, maybe even try to forget their problems." As a result, the TV remains, but it's turned to less controversial fare such as sporting events. Metka Sori, for- merly the PR director of the Eurocoffee Trade Journal, says that soccer (known there as football) is a great community unifier in Europe. Now living in Italy, she appreciates how it brings people of all classes together. "And this frequently happens in the café," she says. From Planet Hollywood to Applebee's, examples abound of American foodservice operations that have successfully inte- grated television into their concept and layout. Television is the continued on page 50 Fresh Cup Magazine 49 PHOTOCAPY