Dreaming of a cafe where people just eat and drink and talk to each other

It’s an issue here but in places like Seoul it’s an absolute nightmare. So much so that they even have a word to describe them and Starbucks have been forced to introduce customer guidelines to create ‘a more comfortable environment’. The move follows reports of people setting up desktop computers, printers and multiple charging points in stores….then wandering off somewhere else for lunch.

We haven’t reached that stage yet but it’s probably only a matter of time. The big coffee brands have always taken a more relaxed approach to this. It suits their post-Friends vibe to have cool young people wearing headphones sitting on laptops all day, looking like they are working on the next great novel.

In reality they are either on LinkedIn trying to work out how to repay their students loan or watching YouTube videos of 20 ways to poach an egg. Either way, it would be better if they were studying basic hospitality economics.

A £3.80 caramel cortado nursed for 6 hours does not pay the bills. It doesn’t even come close. That might matter less to the multiple chains but to small independent cafes, the occupation of many tables by lone customers staring at screens and ordering very little doesn’t just kill the atmosphere, it also destroys the business.

The impact has soared post pandemic with the phenomenon of working from home. Look around any café on a Tuesday morning and you will see people who are on a payroll somewhere but more focussed on TikTok videos and a large slice of caramel shortcake. It’s a problem for national productivity but it’s even more of an issue for a business owner who has to pay rising staff costs, soaring energy bills and an 80 per cent surge in the price of coffee.

My local café owner has a good solution. No public wifi. The result is a space where people eat and drink and talk to each other. It’s a radical idea but seems to work well.

There is another answer. Libraries. In the last decade 42 public libraries in Scotland have closed with funding cut by 30 per cent and staff numbers down by a quarter. The challenge has been finding a focus in the new digital age where information comes from screens not shelves. Well here it is.

Open cafes within libraries to cater for the Cagongjok. Alongside traditional lending they could be spaces for work and study with free wifi, plentiful plug points and stress counsellors on hand for when your Hewlett Packard printer displays ‘restore factory settings’ for the 47th time.

Then after an initial period of appearing open minded to all this, the librarians get down to the real business. Namely mucking about with the connectivity. Maybe even unplugging the router for a while. Users will then leave their seats and wander around the building confused.

At some point they might then pick up a book and open it and before you know it, a whole new cool trend has started called #readingbooks. With a bit of luck, it might just catch on.