It’s a Parisian scene as iconic as the Eiffel Tower: the sidewalk cafe, where outside, bistro chairs and rattan tables invite passers-by to linger and people-watch, and inside, strangers chat about the bar and exchange small talk. espresso and glasses of wine.
But in the last 15 years, a purely Anglophone import of caffeine has hit the cafés and bistros of Paris: specialty coffee. With their carefully curated aesthetics, craftsmanship and rapid growth, cafes, some say, are increasingly capturing the attention, time and dollars of Parisians as well as the millions of international travelers who visit the French capital each year.
Since the early 2010s, when the first wave of specialty cafés opened in France, their number has increased by 74 percent across the country to 3,500, with a new café now opening every week, according to Collectif Café. a trade association.
“Are coffee shops a danger to us? The answer is yes,” said Alain Fontaine, the owner of Le Mesturet bistro in the second arrondissement, who has asked the French government for six years to protect cafes and bistros with special heritage status. Received it in September. “In the long run, it could shut down businesses like ours,” he said.
Paris cafes and bistros have faced competition in the past, in the form of fast-food and coffee chains (mainly Starbucks), home coffee machines (mainly Nespresso), food delivery services, reduced alcohol consumption, remote working and changing consumption habits.
In the 1960s, France counted around 200,000 bistros and cafés across the country. (The distinction between café and bistro has blurred over time; both serve food and drink.) Today, that number has dropped to about 40,000, Mr. Fontaine.
The post-pandemic years have seen much of the growth of specialty coffee, with some new establishments offering takeout only, while others are laptop-friendly. Many are similar in design — small and minimalist, often with a Scandinavian aesthetic. Some also sell flowers or vintage goods or draw inspiration from Asian ingredients.
Much of their early success can be attributed to a growing sense among connoisseurs that the inky, bitter espressos served in Paris cafes can taste shockingly bad.
Every morning before work, Eve Bantman, 49, a researcher at a Paris think tank, walks into her local cafe and makes her way to the zinc bar, where she banters with the staff and a crew of regulars that includes street cleaners and staff at Louvre. Ms Budman loves the sense of community there. But while her friends are turning down their €1.40 (about $1.45) espressos, Ms Budman is nursing a Perrier.
“There are about 15 of us every morning, and it’s packed,” he said. “And coffee is an insurmountable disaster.”
This morning stop is for good company, but for good caffeine, Ms. Badman then grabs a €3 cortado or piccolo to go, from her regular cafe before heading to the office.
The coffee
Australian and American expatriates, along with well-traveled French businessmen, opened the doors to the first cafes, making roasts on the spot and introducing Parisians to milky whites, cortados and other drinks made with highly extracted espresso.
Tom Clarke, an Australian who opened his first Coutume Café on the Left Bank in 2011, said he recognized an opportunity to improve the Paris coffee scene.
“I saw that French culture was completely in sync with specialty coffee culture,” he said. “They really appreciate the idea of where a product comes from, the concept of terroir, like wine and cheese.”
On a recent afternoon at the Partisan Café Artisanal, a favorite stop in the Upper Marais for fashion and creative industry insiders, Sade looked over while a parade of coffee-seekers, including Salome Bravard, 24, joined.
A fashion photographer, Ms. Bravard said he preferred meeting friends in coffee shops over coffee shops because the atmosphere is friendlier, the aesthetic is warmer and, of course, the coffee is better.
“Our generation needs to go to a place where they can take a picture of their coffee and share it on social media,” he said. “People in their 40s and up aren’t necessarily looking for it at all.”
Mr Clark, of Coutume, calls this younger generation “coffee natives”.
“We’ve been around for 13 years and I remember giving free babyccinos to customers when they were five years old,” he said, referring to an order of warmed milk with foam and cocoa powder. “He’s 18 now.”
They grew up going to coffee shops with their parents, she said, and never knew life without latte art.
The culture
It’s hard to overstate the importance of Parisian cafes in French culture. Historic cafes like Le Procope, Café de Flore and Les Deux Magots hosted philosophers, artists, writers, intellectuals and revolutionaries as they engaged in debate, spawned groundbreaking artistic movements and plotted the overthrow of the French monarchy.
French writer Honore de Balzac is said to have described the coffee shop as a “people’s parliament”, democratic spaces where people of all political stripes and classes rubbed shoulders.
At Café Ventura on a quiet weekday morning, it quickly became apparent that the head waiter, a grizzled man in his 50s, and the mustachioed young bartender ran a two-man show based on a concert between themselves and their patrons.
When an elderly woman entered the Pigalle neighborhood cafe, she was greeted with warmth and relief. The comments flew fast and furious.
“Ah, here,” said a waiter.
“We were worried,” said the other.
“I’m not dead,” she quipped, not skipping a beat.
Cafés have long fostered a sense of community in France. Last September, French culture minister Rachida Dati recognized this as well and listed the bistro and cafe on the country’s National Register of Intangible Cultural Heritage, which works to protect and promote French social practices and know-how.
The report submitted by Mr. Fontaine, owner of Le Mesturet bistro, emphasizes that “bistros and cafes are distinguished by personalized service quality creating a unique atmosphere. They are characterized by the rich interaction between bistro owners, waiters and customers in this cultural space.”
In modern sociological parlance, cafés and bistros are Paris’ “third place”—a site of social interaction outside of work and home, where lonely seniors go to chat with the bartender or where students and others can escape from small apartments.
Over time, the concern is that the café’s role as the heart of Parisian society will become obsolete, said Mr. Fontaine, as the younger generation turns to the coffee shop.
“There’s no depth to the coffee shop, no history, no patina,” he said.
The opposites
But coffee shops can also become community spaces.
At Café Jirisan, in the second arrondissement, one of Paris’ many Asian cafes, lines of people wait outside for souffle cheesecakes and matcha lattes. Inside, the space evokes a rustic cottage, where Korean and French titles line bookshelves and a faux fireplace flickers in the corner.
“When I walk into a cafe, I imagine a warm atmosphere, but I want to feel comfortable,” said owner Hera Hong, a South Korean expatriate. “What I like to see is people staying and knitting, reading their books, a bit like a grandma’s house.”
Not all cafe managers share the concerns of Mr. Fontaine. Jérôme Martinho, manager of Café Ventura, said those concerns were unfounded.
“I don’t think we have the same clientele,” he said, adding that he believes coffee shops serve a niche market, while coffee shops offer more — a greater variety of food and coffee, as well as alcohol — in one space.
Many customers who head straight to the bar at coffee shops, where espressos are cheaper than table service, are workers, he said, looking for a quick, cheap caffeine hit.
In 2020, Ms. Bantman, the researcher, wrote a paper published in the journal Anthropologie et Sociétés, which argued that the meteoric growth of cafes led to a reinvention of French elitism.
In a recent interview, she expanded on her advocacy issues, which included coffee prices – between €1 and €1.50 for an espresso at the café bar, compared to €5 or more for a specialty coffee – as well as the class and education levels of patrons and owners of these facilities. Those in coffee shops tend to be college-educated, he said, while coffee-counter drinkers may have less education.
Age is also a crucial difference. Although the cafe has traditionally been the democratic town hall for all, the younger generations seem to be heading elsewhere.
Ms. Badman joked that he is on a mission to turn coffee baristas into baristas, to bring together the best of both worlds: “If I could help save French cafes, that would be great.”
