Informality

A coffee bar primarily sells coffee, and that very simple fact is one of the reasons for the informality a coffee bar represents. The option just to order coffee, and nothing else, makes an important contribution to the informality of the coffee bars, at least according to Anders, a regular at Java. Anders is in his late thirties, and works in marketing.

A cup of coffee is something very common. OK, the coffee served inside here is posh, yes, with all the different versions you can have, like cappuccino, macchiato, caffee latte, double, simple, you name it, but it is still a cup of coffee. Don’t forget that.

Anders underscored that coffee in itself is a drink that connotes “a relaxed normal attitude”, and that coffee is not something most people would label as out their reach either culturally or in taste.

“You can order ‘today’s coffee’ if you don’t like the other more sophisticated coffee beverages, and that’s something you are accustomed to,

Anders said, referring to coffee as an integral part of most Norwegians’ diets.

That a coffee bar is a simplistic service institution further contributes to the informality. You have to stand in line for the products you buy; you pay at the counter and bring them back to where you have chosen your seat. You are doing a lot of the job yourself. As another customer explained:

A coffee bar is not a canteen, but on the other hand, it shares many of the same features.

There is a certain truth to this statement, the similarity to a canteen, to the self-service part of the customer experience. Even if it is easy to argue that the production of your cup of coffee is a nurturing and skill demanding process – the other parts of the experience are marked by a high degree of self-service. The informality is directly connected to the staff and the tasks they do and don’t do. Since there is no table service, the staff becomes less dominant, and the space inside a coffee bar becomes more the property of those who visit it than is true in most restaurants and cafes.

One of the reasons why I feel comfortable in most coffee bars is that the staff leaves me alone. I mean they just don’t walk around and ask you “Anything else?” or “How was it?” That makes the space more mine…

said Sølve, who works at an advertising firm and is in his early forties. He wanted to emphasize that a good coffee bar “has the ability to connect to the normal people in the street outside.” This argument is also relevant regarding the dress code, which as Sølve noted is “as liberal as the street outside”.

Many of those I interviewed pointed out that a liberal dress code is obviously a factor but at the same time also based on an incorrect assumption, namely that Norwegian society in general is governed by a conservative dress code.

As one of them put it, in fact:

Nowadays you can enter a top notch restaurant in jeans, and no-one will raise an eyebrow.

Still, the comparison to the restaurant is productive for what it suggests about the understood appeal of a coffee bar.

Olga also differentiated the coffee bar from other places where drinks and food can be bought and consumed, and underscored that the coffee bar is a more informal setting to meet. She added:

…restaurants are very different. It’s both a question of money and time, but maybe most important … a restaurant is … much more of a project.

References to the informality of a coffee bar also encapsulate other qualities, more subtle and less easy to observe – many of them further elaborated below – but most importantly the relaxed mood, the mental openness of the space.

However expressed, it is clear that informality is important, and coffee bars stand out as places with a low threshold – from a psychological perspective.

It is worth noting that there is a considerable correlation between the

experience of informality – a mentally low threshold – and the physically low threshold or barrier to entry of many coffee bars.

The question of informality was an important one for the customers I interviewed. From what coffee bar customers said to me, it is clear that informality is a basic feature and an absolute precondition; it is a principal part of what makes a coffee bar a coffee bar. But most customers used other words in their attempt to describe informality, and it is my interpretation of their verbal descriptions that brings me to label informality as a requirement.

Customers often used the simple word mood, and the more or less synonymous atmosphere to describe what I consider to be indications of informality. Everyone seemed to be seeking this mood. A client at Java said:

Atmosphere, now that’s important, I think. This place, I might call cozy. Very cozy, even! On the other hand, it isn’t a place you can hang out at for a long time, as they only have bar stools to sit on.

Or as Hilde, a regular at Kaffebrenneriet in Ullevålsveien said:

I think it’s very nice to be inside here. Although there are chairs outside, and the weather is fine right now, I don’t like sitting out there. The coffee tastes better in here.