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The 7 Habits of highly effective hipster cafes

The 7 Habits of highly effective hipster cafes 12 March 2015 No. 1 - Name Your cafe doesn’t just happen, it’s a confluence of careful construction. You choose its name, like you do your

The 7 Habits of highly effective hipster cafes

12 March 2015

No. 1 - Name

Your cafe doesn’t just happen, it’s a confluence of careful construction.

You choose its name, like you do your firstborn.

You look at the stars, you break open TWG teabags, you read Monocle. Lower case is good, but somehow lacks authority, like a misspelling preschooler.

Two word names, like ‘The Dust & The Bunny,’ might be confused for an English pub. One easy way is to make a list of verbs and a list of nouns, then mash them together: ‘Dreaming Kitchen,’ ‘The Feathered Circle,’ ‘Koalala Caves.’

No. 2 - Ambience

EnVision your cafe.

You want reviewers to use words like rustic, bespoke, natural light, mismatched furniture. Have a turntable, a fireplace, recycle your timber.

Make your ceiling naked. Flaunt the air-con vents, bare those pipes. trail the light bulb wires. You have to open for breakfast. All day breakfast. Every day breakfast.

Let it be a leisurely affair, or a turnstile buzz of carefully curated hash-tagged hipsters thumbing through artwork from unknown artists or handcrafted memorabilia that no one buys.

The menu is on clipboards, or carefully chalked on the wall in code.

No. 3 - Location

Choose.

Either be hard to get to, or be in the centre of the action. You can’t be everywhere, and neither can hipsters on fixies.

If you’re out of the way, you have to be ‘worth the trek,’ hidden in green swards,’ ‘tucked in a neighborhood you need to change three buses for.’

The city hipster cafe is premised on the promise of fast-food hipsterism, in-out swaggers with twice recycled paper cups,

They have been to one of the many temples, they have surrendered themselves to the latte swami and gained their daily sip of enlightenment.

No. 4 - Food

Experiment. Remember that flavour and freshness are your frontline friends. Eggs might be your staple.

But wait. Not just any eggs: Vine-grown, hand crafted, artisanal eggs Benedict paired with baba ghanoush and pomegranate, softly boiled eggs with peanut mousse and condensed milk ice-cream.

Invent, be known as the food whispairer.

Maple-glazed fish with pumpkin tarts, sardine toasties with avocado porridge, muffins with red bean foam and smoked cheese.

Homemade is everything. From bacon and butter to broccoli.

Organic is everything. From flowers on the table to water in the washroom.

And always keep one serving for late hipster joggers to sprint for the last organic poached chicken on Turkish toast with buttermilk and house-made herb dressing.

No. 5 - Wait Staff

The staff are too indie to have time to serve you, so gaze instead upon the barista.

He will be bearded. It is a beard of valiant warriors, a beard of Philosophical musing, an amiable marriage between bean and roast, a tangled blend that draws mystique and mung bean together.

You will be tempted to touch him. Resist.

There may be a mural or a sticker on the wall in his likeness, which you can Instagram. But never photograph the man himself.

That is sacrilege.

It will reduce his aura, and render the next coffee he makes into a black hole of blandness.

No. 6 - Music

Music is curated according to three different demographics of hipster. Hipster, ironic hipster, or business casual, all generally featuring an outsider‘s sense of anachronistic displacement.

There should be an ironic instrument like a ukulele, accordion or acoustic guitar (double irony there). Your playlist can include songs along the lines of ‘Milder Pigeons and Other Forms of Antibiotics’ or remixes of ‘Ice Ice Baby’ with a mandolin solo.

No. 7 - Coffee

Hand roast your own fair trade, organic coffee beans.

Sedate the crowd with a Black Pepper & Vanilla Fig Latte or let them marvel at Ethiopian Yirgacheffe Kochere pour-overs and Brazil Laranjal Farm drips.

Push the bar with a carrot frappuccino on a double shot of kopi luwak.

Permeate the air with the scent of freshly ground beans; this is incense, a devotion, an infusion from sip to soul. It will smooth the cheeks and brighten the eyes of the faithful.

Get 7 Habits free when you purchase a rattan backpack from any organically grown cafe and coming soon, ‘The 8th Habit - From hipster to hippie: closing the circle of success.’

Mackerel Magazinebistro, cafe, hipster, poe