Federation Coffee is brilliant. It's a great place to go on a Saturday, have a sit, have a beautiful americano or two, take a notepad and scribble out whatever it is that's on your mind at the time.
It's a young and very genuine addition to these almost gourmet coffee houses that one isn't really prepared for coming from Cardiff. Last week I spent a bit of time thinking about the new coffee shop look; a sort of 'railway sleeper chic'.
I love how these places look. It seems to tie in with a fascination with fixed-gear bikes, beards and chrome that I picked up a few weeks ago on the Convoy blog. Musically, the aesthetic stretches to Grizzly Bear, Fleet Foxes and Seattle: a rainy, authentic tartan-shirted affair where you 'just know' what quality is, without really needing to be told. The standard and style of service and product are implicit in their presentation.
That, of course, is nothing new, it's a basic question of creating a unified brand to deliver meaning and drive take-up. People develop their own affinities based on the visual cues around them. But over the last few decades there's usually been a fair bit of signage or labelling to explicitly point out a product's key selling points. At the turn of the 80s/90s we had 'as seen on TV'; 10 years later we had the importance of a product story. And now it seems we're moving towards objects whose entire heritage is visible in the product themselves, or the environment in which they are served. You don't need to see little pots of coffee beans in various stages of roasting any more, or see extended menus outlining every single variety, ingredient and size. You just know.
I'm quite into this, but I'm worried that it's become the established look du-jour of the niche back street place that middle class twentysomethings show off to their friends about. Not for my own sake, but because I'm worried about what happens when the trend filters out to mass adoption.
Starbucks have already started removing their branding from some of their US neighbourhood stores, in an effort to appear 'more authentic'. In the UK, there was a bit of a humph a few years ago when McDonald's adopted a tasteful green façade on some of their shops. But in McDonald's case the neon counters and chip fryers at the back of the store stayed the same. As we move forward though I can see bigger chains adopting the distressed counters and coffee-crate looks that I love in small, independent outlets right now. What will happen then?
If more people feel comfortable in those environments, will they stay the same? What will happen when people apply their own ideals and heritage stories to things, that are different from those intended by their creators? Is that cool? And how will we differentiate, and will differentiation matter?
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Mark Hadfield inspired me to use 'authentic photography' for this post, but it's only the ideas here that will degrade over time, not the pictures.