What Makes a Great Café?

As first appeared in NewsBreak

By Aron Solomon

For those who follow the world of coffee, you’ll know that we are in what is known as the “third wave,” a term used to describe the current state of the specialty coffee industry. The first wave of coffee was focused on convenience and speed, with mass-produced instant coffee being a major player in this time period. The second wave saw higher-quality beans and brewing methods coming into play, but it was still primarily aimed at the mainstream consumer.

Third-wave coffee represents something more: it’s about taking advantage of the best beans available, using them in new ways, and making sure that everyone who drinks it gets to enjoy the full potential of their brew.

But not all cafes identify as third-wave, nor should they. The experience of going to a cafe goes far beyond the quality of the coffee being served.

Having been to cafes all over the world in over three million miles of travel, I’ve often thought about what makes a great cafe.

From my perspective, a great cafe has eight essential qualities:

Good coffee:

A great cafe should serve high-quality coffee that is well-crafted and consistently delicious. But good coffee doesn’t necessarily translate to a good cafe experience. Many of us have had superb coffee served to us in a cafe that detracted from our enjoyment of the coffee.

The baseline for a great cafe has to be good coffee. Not every great cafe is going to have world-class coffee, but we can’t consider a cafe to be great if the coffee is less than good.

Comfortable atmosphere:

A cafe should have a welcoming and comfortable atmosphere that makes customers want to stay and relax. If you’re not comfortable in a cafe, for whatever reason, you’re not going to have a good experience, and you’re not going to want to return. Of course, not everyone’s definition of comfort is the same – different people are looking for different things within a cafe.

Friendly and attentive service:

The staff should be friendly and attentive to the needs of their customers, making sure they have the kind of experience that will bring them back again and again.

As Vito Azzue, owner of Montreal’s Café Vito, points out, more people than ever want a community experience when they go to a cafe:

“Our cafe is deeply integrated into our community. We hold events here, like Halloween and Christmas parties. We put big screen TVs outside in the summer for professional tennis and Formula 1 racing. We treat our customers like family, which is why they come back.”

This notion of a cafe as an integral part of the community is a kind of renaissance, a throwback to earlier days. But people are asking for this, as many have grown tired of stale, corporate cafe culture. They want to drink coffee in a cafe that is nothing less than a community hub, where they can hear stories, see people in the neighborhood, and feel like they belong.

Cleanliness:

A great cafe should be kept clean and well-maintained at all times. I have been to many cafes that seem to feel that if they are cultivating an alternative or hipster vibe, being a little grungy is part of it. But it’s not. Very few people want to drink coffee or spend any time in a place that has inferior standards for cleanliness. If a place isn’t clean, why would the owners think that anyone would want to drink or eat anything from there?

Good food:

Many cafes also serve food, and a great cafe should serve food that is well-prepared, high-quality, and reasonably priced.

Food and coffee have gone together for generations, but what we’re not seeing are cafes taking their culinary art to the next level, just as they have with their coffee. It’s great that we now have a wide range of cafes, offering anything from a simple snack to almost a Michelin-starred food experience. People love choice, and while some people (me included) just enjoy their coffee with no food, others find food to be a central perk of a great cafe.

Offer strong Wi-Fi or NO Wi-Fi :

Having strong and reliable WiFi connection is a great plus point, but if a cafe doesn’t want people on their laptops, that’s totally fine too. Just don’t have lousy Wi-Fi if you’re going to offer it. It’s a deal-breaker for many guests.

Krenar Camili, a New Jersey lawyer, commented that:

“Sometimes going to a cafe is a really nice escape from the day you don’t want to be tempted to turn it into a work session by bringing your laptop and using Wi-Fi.”

A new trend that I’ve witnessed a lot is people not only using Wi-Fi to get some private work done on their laptop, but doing Zoom calls and the like, even in a small, intimate cafe. This should always be a common courtesy no-go, which should really go without saying.

Diversity of seating options:

A cafe should be designed to accommodate a range of preferences, whether customers want to work on a laptop, read a book, or chat with friends. By having multiple seating options, a cafe can create a great experience for multiple types of visitors – not everyone wants to spend time in a cafe in the exact same way.

A Unique and memorable experience:

This is precisely why I think that once a cafe hits the baseline of good (again – it doesn’t have to be amazing) coffee, everything else becomes far more important and the coffee itself fades into the background in a very good sense. A great cafe should offer something unique that sets it apart from the others and makes customers want to come back.

What should that unique aspect be? It doesn’t matter, as long as it’s authentic. And that’s the most important part of any cafe. A cafe should be both a creative expression of the people who run the cafe as well as its patrons. It really is a shared experience. So for it to be memorable, a cafe should not try to be everything to everybody, but should authentically serve the people who they want to attract – that target group of people who can help the cafe succeed.

About Aron Solomon:

A Pulitzer Prize-nominated writer, Aron Solomon, JD, is the Chief Legal Analyst for Esquire Digital and the Editor-in-Chief for Today’s Esquire. He has taught entrepreneurship at McGill University and the University of Pennsylvania, and was elected to Fastcase 50, recognizing the top 50 legal innovators in the world. Aron has been featured in Forbes, CBS News, CNBC, USA Today, ESPN, TechCrunch, The Hill, BuzzFeed, Fortune, Venture Beat, The Independent, Fortune China, Yahoo!, ABA Journal, Law.com, The Boston Globe, YouTube, NewsBreak, and many other leading publications.