Coffee Tawk

Will there be a fourth wave or will it come crashing down?

Last week I was in NYC staying at Lafayette House, which I love because it feels like the Bowery Hotel for artists; it’s owned by Eric Goode (co-owner of The Bowery), and the rooms and public spaces feel very Bowery-esque, down to the embroidered sheets. I like it because you cannot book it online - you sort of need an intro, and I’m a sucker for inside access - and it is, by NYC standards, cheap. There are no amenities. No bellhop, no elevator, no lobby, no restaurant.

Bowery lovers will recognize the embroidered sheets.

I spent several days around Nolita, Noho, Soho, and West Village, in the nexus of consumption, consumerism, and trendy coffee. I’m often clocking what’s happening in the NYC coffee scene because it’s a sign of things to come for the rest of us.

Years ago, I owned a coffee shop/cafe, and we served La Colombe; I still love their richer, balanced, Italian-style roast profiles. This choice was also a middle finger to the coffee nerds of Charleston; at the time, they corralled around an undrinkable, highly acidic, underroasted style that was beloved amongst their clubby ranks. I found it closely resembled bile, and there was, at that time, a particular barista snobbery that I could not stand. (Later, they moved on to sour beers and poorly-made natural wine, which I found as drinkable as the coffee they had so feverishly championed.)

In NYC, there were lines at La Cabra and Rhythm Zero, a never-ending crowd at Bar Pisellino (where I took a couple coffee meetings, myself), and an in-store Jack’s Stir Brew at the new-ish J. Crew on Bond Street. When I got home, I clocked a couple of coffee-related pieces that got my wheels turning.

First, my friend Colin Nagy (who hosted me for a fantastic dinner at Prune on Friday) wrote about Luckin Coffee, a Chinese brand expanding across Manhattan with a promise of inexpensive coffee sans frills, betting that customers don’t care about couches for lounging or free Wi-Fi, and are instead looking for quick caffeination on the cheap. And then NY Magazine wrote about that Jack’s Stir Brew at J. Crew, and other similar retail/coffee mashups, in what they propose is an impending Fourth Wave of coffee, the Brewtique.

I’m not qualified to speak about these micro-trends turning macro, or what the future of coffee may be, but I do have a sense of what the future of coffee should be.

When I was arranging coffee with a friend, designer Jake Zalienski of Bent Books, I had a single rubric for where we might go: I wanted my coffee served to me in a proper cup, not paper. It feels like coffee shops have been stripped of the dignity, humanity, and elegance that underpins the best cafes of Europe.

It started with Wi-Fi, of course - the single worst thing to happen to cafe culture. Soon after, people began to believe they were entitled to turn their neighborhood coffee shop into their own personal co-working space. If I visit a coffee shop in Charleston after 10 am, there is an eerie silence, people’s heads buried in laptops. Gone are the conversations, the hum of humanity that is the marker of a truly great gathering place in any community. (Perhaps I am still burned from the uproar of customers who could not imagine why we would have removed the WiFi from our own cafe. Where were they to get their work done, after all - home?!)

Bar Oliver in NYC, where the coffee is served in a proper vessel.

Once WiFi took over, any remaining dignity of experience was summarily dismissed. The American coffee shop experience is now woefully undignified: you wait in line to order and then herd together with everyone else while the coffee is made, jockeying for space and dodging others on their way in or out. When the coffee IS ready, it’s served to you in a paper cup (nothing worse than an espresso in a paper cup). In the rare instance you get a proper ceramic coffee cup, you will bus your own table and tip for privilege.

It may make me sound like a grumpy old fuck, but the romance has been streamlined out of the entire coffee drinking experience. These days, I take my coffee at home and try my best to avoid this comedy of errors. (I’m certainly not suggesting all coffee shops are guilty of this, but many of them are leaning this way.)

To me, it seems we are not far off from a fork in the road for the coffee drinker: you will have the choice of the cheap and frill-less spot like Luckin Coffee, or a more robust customer service experience with a price to match, like Bar Pisellino in NYC.

At Pisellino, there is a consideration of the simple niceties of a proper cafe experience. You sit at a table and are greeted quickly by a member of the staff. A streamlined (and beautifully executed) coffee menu is offered, and selections are delivered to you in proper porcelain cups, with a small glass of water on the side. When you’re ready to pay, you can do so quickly and easily via their handheld point-of-sale system. There is no bussing of your own table; if you can believe it, you simply get up and walk away! It’s a miracle. Judging by the number of people I had meetings with last week who suggested Pisellino as our rallying point (not to mention their expansion into the spaces next door), it’s clearly working.

The $6 cortado (plus tip) with fuck-all to show for it is not long for this world - soon, I believe, the sophisticated consumer will demand a more thoughtful experience, and the penny pincher will be happy to pay much less for a quick cup, on-the-go. The two camps will be divided, and the WiFi poachers will have no choice but to retreat, in defeat, to the largest co-working space in the nation: Starbucks.