Melbourne cafe Napier Quarter bans takeaway coffees
A Melbourne café is banning takeaway coffee cups in a bid to get its customers to slow down.
Napier Quarter owner Daniel Lewis says his customers are all locals who “enjoy the ritual” of sitting down for a coffee or pastry.
"There is a conglomerate of people standing around with backpacks, on their phones, and it takes away from the experience,” he said. “It's turning into a takeaway generation, it's not what we are about."
Lewis says he was first motivated to "phase out" takeaway coffee for environmental concerns.
"Our takeaway cups are biodegradable and I started trying to research a company you can use that hires a bin for people to biodegrade coffee cups," Lewis said.
"I thought the whole purpose of having a plastic bin to do that is counter intuitive. I thought we just need to go back to the source of the problem. The younger generation now don't remember a time when there wasn't takeaway coffees, I do."
Despite takeaway coffee sales making up about 25 per cent of Napier Quarter's morning business, Lewis decided the solution was to get rid of takeaway coffees altogether. To encourage his customers to sit down for a cuppa instead he dropped the price of its coffees to $3.50.
"It is a risk financially to do this for sure, one we will lose customers and the other is I am trying to attract customers by giving them a discounted coffee as well," he said.
"Everyone has time to sit down and have a coffee. We are taking our references from classic European and Lygon street in the 1950s. Taking that time, to not compromise to having a moment to yourself every day. I think it is really important in that day and age instead of facilitating this really wasteful takeaway culture. Everyone thinks they are so much busier, but they are not. You can certainly make time to sit down and have a coffee."
Sheridan Randall, 17th December 2018
