Designing a coffee shop that is not an Instagram post or a brand
An interesting article on the thought processes in the design of Lemari Kopi, a coffee shop in Bumi Serpong Damai in Indonesia.
More than any other coffee shop, they value tradition and the progression of coffee culture in Indonesia. Thus aiming for conserving and sharing all things that are related to coffee culture to the people who visit their shop.
A simple dream to promote local coffee heritage and preserve the traditional way of drinking coffee. … we feel the needs to emphasise the human side of coffee culture.
The name lemari literally derives from bahasa that means storage, thus creating this as a Coffee Shop that not only serve coffee, but also gives all the information that you need to know about the history, current trends, and the future of coffee culture.
A breath of fresh air to a post by Caffeine that viewed coffee shops through the lens of Instagram posts.
But neither should a coffee shop be seen as a brand, not unless creating a chain, and once create a chain, lost the quirkiness of a coffee shop, it screams corporate and have lost the plot.
All the coffee shops I know, and there are many, are all different, and that is what makes them worth visiting, they are different, they are individual, they have character. And they all serve excellent coffee.
And that is what makes them worth visiting, they have ambience, character, a necessary but not sufficient condition. They also have to have excellent service, serve excellent coffee, and do so consistently.
Consistency is often the hardest to achieve.
London Coffee or 111 Coffee Shops in London That You Must Not Miss illustrates the quirky nature of London coffee shops.
I can think of Lincoln, three coffee shops worth visiting, all different, Brighton, too many to count, my favourite coffee shops in Athens.
They are all memorable, each in their own different way.
Why even post pictures on Instagram? What is the attraction?
Owned by Facebook, bait within a walled garden, abuse of personal data, pictures not visible on twitter, ownership rights claimed on the pictures, some of the many reasons not to use Instagram.
Why post pictures of takeaway cups? Do we wish to be associated with trash, damage to the environment? If not convinced, pause and consider the plastic pollution off Bali.
TripAdvisor rendered worthless. Too many fake reviews. What to do?
Miyu Coffee overlooking Fig Tree Bay, one of the busiest beaches on the island of Cyprus. And yet very few customers. A few would ask, why can we not find this coffee shop on the internet?
A twitter account was opened @MiyuCoffee a web page created on Medium and located on Google Maps.
What followed, a marked increase in customers, they now had a presence on the net, could be found by those who were looking on-line for coffee shops.
How many hits for any individual photo on Instagram?
The Underdog, one picture on Google Maps posted last October, 65,398 hits as of last week.
Not that we should we get too hung up on metrics, number of followers, number of hits. A crude measure at best.
Indonesia has a long association with coffee, dating from the Dutch East Indies from when the Dutch East India Company stole coffee plants from Yemen.
To see a coffee shop celebrating coffee culture and not only as an export crop is excellent news. Ethiopia is unusual in that it consumes more coffee than it export.
Excellent design of Lemari Kopi and it is interesting to see the iterative design process laid bare. Usually we see the finished design, but no idea of the thought processes of how we got there.
I like the idea of a bar for customers to have a go at making their own coffee.
And the coffee? With such high expectations, hopefully showcasing the best of Indonesian speciality coffee.
As with Indonesia, there are now many in England opening coffee shops, sometimes they get the interior right, a cookie cutter approach, cut and paste a coffee shop, expectations raised, then serve undrinkable coffee. These coffee shops are opened by people clueless on coffee, who have lost sight of the fundamentals, serving excellent coffee. What is the point, for undrinkable coffee we have the corporate coffee chains serving undrinkable coffee?
