What Makes You Frequently Visit a Coffee Shop? What Kind of Coffee Shop Attracts You?

Sitting in my regular café on a scorching summer day, enjoying the air conditioning while typing away.

Suddenly someone pushes the door open and calls out:

"Boss! One as usual, to go, thank you!"

"Alright, got it!"

In other words: "Boss, one coffee the same as last time, to go, thank you."

The scene is Guangzhou. As someone who visits cafés often, I hear this exchange all the time, and I bet something similar happens in your city too.

I suspect many of us are people who care about the quality of their "third places" - this writer included. After work on a weekday or on a day off, I like to drop into a café. When I do, though, I never look at it from a barista's point of view; I go purely to drink a cup of coffee, giving myself a chance to change roles and catch my breath.

So what makes you keep going back to the same coffee shop?

Reader Ah Zhen says:

- Convenient and fast, easy to get to and easy to leave;
- A wide range of single-origin coffees, with seasonal beans updated regularly, good for trying new flavors;
- Background music, atmosphere, aroma;
- The air conditioning temperature and how comfortable the seats are.

Reader Ah Qiang says:

- A convenient location, ideally with parking;
- Plenty of interesting choices, reasonable prices, and a willingness to pay for something special;
- A clean, tidy storefront, ideally with a crowd of fellow coffee lovers;
- The chance to chat with the barista or the owner.

The "third space" is a theory and concept widely applied in sociology, urban planning and commerce. Generally speaking, daily life is distributed across three spaces:

First Space - home, where you live;

Second Space - the company, where you work;

Third Space - social venues and places for leisure, entertainment and conversation.

To me, the third space serves as a transition and a connection between the first and second. Having a good third space matters a great deal.

Approachability and Human Touch

Approachability - call it service attitude - is a powerful weapon. The differences between shops tend to show up here.

From Stranger to Regular

A café is actually a complex entity, even a kind of life station. Put simply, it comes down to being able to chat with the barista, the owner or the other regulars.

I think many people have had this experience: you walk past a coffee shop with a decent-looking storefront on a very hot day, your phone is about to die, so you go in on a whim to borrow some power, enjoying the air conditioning and the WiFi, and order the cheapest drink. Before you know it, the barista or another customer has struck up a conversation, and gradually you become a regular.

Resonance

Cafés need to do the small things that create memory points between customers and the place, especially community-based shops. Here is an unpolished suggestion: when it is warranted, offer a few services unrelated to business, and try not to refuse appropriate small favors.

If you have read this far, your love of coffee is clearly no passing fling. Share in the comments what draws you back to your favorite café.

Image source: Internet

FrontStreet Coffee Recommendation

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For a gentler, everyday balance, FrontStreet Coffee's Brazil Cerrado and Queen Estate deliver the creamy, peanut and cocoa flavors typical of Brazil, both sweet and smooth and easy to brew. They are the kind of beans that make a regular order feel effortless.