2: It’s A Public Space

 Opening a café is the culmination of months if not years of hard work. At one point you’ve made the decision to create a space where people can come and drink your vision of what coffee should be like and eat the food that you want them to eat. You’ll have spent hours looking at restaurant and shop interiors, fantasizing what eccentricities yours would have and what feeling it would evoke when you walk through the door. You’ll have been in countless meetings with your architect, contractor and project manager (if you can afford one - you really should try to!) going over all the details, why you’re going over budget or past the initial completion time. You’ll have browsed the catalogues of your local crockery wholesalers, you’ll have been in touch with local suppliers, the list goes on and on.

After all this work, you’re ready to open your doors. You do a soft launch for friends and family and the day after your café, your space, is officially open for business. It’ll take a while for you to have regulars but you have a few customers. And then to your horror, you realise they don’t at all do what they’re meant to do. A group of three has taken a chair from another table. A laptop user has not taken the cue to sit on the uncomfortable bar by the wall but has instead made himself comfortable at the big communal table. People ask you to pull your shots longer, even though you run them volumetric and it’s not something you’re willing to do. Why don’t you do skimmed milk? You really should have cashew milk. You’re playing the music too loud. Why would anyone want to add milk to their washed Kenyan? And then you realise.

Your space isn’t yours anymore.

In my opinion, a lot of bad service in modern espresso bars comes from this disconnect between the way the owner intended his space to be used, and the way his guests actually use it. As a café owner you may not be at ease with how you can lose control over your space and perhaps even your income, simply because some people don’t think they way you do. You’d be forgiven to want to put a stop to it.

I have worked in spaces where management has tried to police their shop heavyhandedly. Against the owner’s best hopes the irks did not disappear, on the contrary, they were felt even harder and things invariably escalated into conflict, bad reviews, and a general feeling of defeat. Banning laptops because of a “digital detox” with all its condescension will have people on the offense, trying to limit their use to one hour is too confusing to police, bolting down tables turns the café into a East End greasy spoon, no you will not charge that phone, and banning children is just a bridge too far.

As an accomplished café owner you will be in a state of constant adaptation, and responding to guests’ behaviour is just one of the ways that you are challenged. You cannot simply refuse to engage with that challenge by setting your rules in stone. Instead, you must question not only your layout and your workflow but also how you fit into the modern café culture and how your space is transparent to that. If you build an airy, open space with plugs everywhere then people will understand you as a modern coffee shop where they are welcome to bring their laptops and kids. If you build a bistrot looking space then people will take it as a lunch or dinner spot and you’re not going to get the laptop crowds even though you’d love them to fill your quiet hours.

You have opened a private space to the public. At one point you’re going to have to let the public actually use it and make it their own.