To know a city, spend time in its cafes. Whether it is Paris, New York, Vienna, or Italy?s little trattorias, cafes capture local life in all its colour and gore. Today, this is equally true of the Indian cities?Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, Chennai but even Chandigarh, Pune, Jaipur… For a chai-loving country (except in the Peninsular states where Colonial enterprise made the milky bean-brew a daily ritual), it is amazing how coffee and cafes today symbolise an entire lifestyle of the young and aspiring.
It is also not for nothing that cafes make for such brisk business in India today. At the last count (as part of a National Restaurants Association of India-Technopak survey in 2010), there were 1,500 in the organized segment. And of the R43,000-crore business of restaurants, the casual/ caf? format is the largest growing?at a phenomenal 35 per annum. This, when our per capita consumption of coffee is hardly the highest: At under 100g per year, it is less than the 2 kg in Europe. But then, cafes today are much more than coffee?even one served in an MNC cup.
After so many years of scouting for the perfect opportunity, Starbucks will finally be serving up its brew in India. The tie-up with Tata Beverages means it gets its coffee much cheaper than if it was importing. Pricing in a market as sensitive as India will obviously matter, but equally, it will need to contend with competition from a clutch of individualistic, premium cafes that define the business at the highest end in the metros.
Though the home-grown Caf? Coffee Day is the biggest chain (with more than 900 stores), outlets selling simply coffee (and milkshakes!) are hardly what the growing band of foodies are expecting and getting in an increasingly sophisticated market. For one, there is growing recognition that food is equally important. Some stats say that even at coffee-driven chain-stores, food sales now constitute about 30-40% of the total. As the market grows, innovation in terms of food will become increasingly important.
Premium, local cafes are a category that has been growing not just in terms of absolute numbers but as a lifestyle phenomenon in urban India. And here, food is the most important criterion (apart from free internet and ambience) that sets these places apart. Look at the best-known, most-talked-about cafes in the metros and you will know what I mean.
In Delhi, the caf? with the maximum buzz at the moment is hardly one of the regular CCDs, or even the more upscale Mocha, Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf and so on. Instead, it is the charming Elam?s Tea Room in Hauz Khas Village done up like an English countryside parlour. The homemade cakes and specials like shepherd?s pie and soups are what draw in the arty/boho-chic crowd here. Other favourites include Latitude, Diva Caf?, Market Caf?, Caf? Turtle?all legit cafes but with full, albeit accessible, menus, that pull in crowds as much over lunch and dinner as over tea and job-interviews, tarot sessions, business meetings, office work, poetry-writing and so forth.
In Mumbai, the best known cafes frequented by everyone from the creative to Bollywood types include Le Pain Quotidien (loved for its homemade bread pudding), the Prithvi Caf? (samosas), Kala Ghoda caf? (carrot cake) not to mention the more restauranty-but-casual-chic Pali Village Caf?. In Chennai, Coffee? is another entrant into this space, conceptualized by an interior designer and a cinematographer. And there?s the charming Amethyst, relying equally on its casual atmosphere as on hummous-pita to bring in the numbers.
In fact, so vibrant and fast-growing is this space that restaurateurs and chefs across board are increasingly keen to experiment with it. Restaurant companies which had hitherto sought to establish more serious ?gourmet? or ?plush/ lifestyle? restaurants now seem keen to enter this booming casual segment: If Indigo deli does good business, chef-restaurateur Ritu Dalmia has just launched Diva Piccolo, or ?baby? Diva, in Delhi, which will function like a trattoria, offering easy pizzas, aglio-olios, salads and other basic-but-interesting caf?-type recipes in a limited-seating format.
It is these that Starbucks will have to contend with. As also with the idea that in India, circa 2012, the caf? is much more than a place for a coffee. It encompasses an entire lifestyle; a place to see and be seen at, to write in solitude with the illusion of company, to seek business and to entertain, and, yes, a space for gourmet pleasures.
The writer is a food critic