by Caroline Cox

Created on: November 25, 2010

“Doing Coffee” – the new “Doing Lunch”

 I had a lunch time business meeting in a local coffee house yesterday. The three of us sat in comfortable chairs, hands clasped round steaming deep cups and talked finance and the state of the world.

 Two of us had carrot cake on the side, the third kept to a skinny, decaf cappuccino in deference to these slimmed down times.

 And that’s the thing isn’t it? Two years ago, maybe even last year, this meeting would have taken place at a smart bistro, with perhaps a bottle of wine, or at the very least some fancy bottle of fizzy water. My two companions and I would have been one table amongst many networking businessmen and women doing deals and oiling the economy’s wheels.

 Walk past the bistro now with its black board proclaiming two courses for £9.95 and what do you see? Nothing and no-one. The waiters wait hopefully for the door to open but it won’t – everyone is at the coffee house.

 Clearly the recession and the squeeze on our corporate as well as personal purses have had a lot to do with this. The expense account is not the thing it once was but the wheels still have the oiled and the networks still have to be made and so our humble coffee shops have wised up and stepped into the breach, turning themselves into corporate meeting hubs where the be-suited and bespectacled can cut their deals and do their business.

 Of course, the truth is the coffee is house is simply going back to its roots. Britain’s first coffee house opened in 1652 and immediately became a meeting point for the business and political classes. For the price of a penny, customers purchased a cup of coffee and admission to the coffeehouse where patrons would discuss everything from politics to scandal, philosophy to current affairs. Business would be discussed and deals done over the new, fashionable beverage that was transforming society.

 While the 17th Century coffee house was an exclusively male preserve today’s plushed up, cake offering establishments offer the feminine touch, where every taste, whim and fancy is attended to and every want catered for. A double shot latte and a chocolate brownie? A decaf mocha chinoand a pasty, an espresso dark as tar with that delicious slick of caramel top. The coffee house on every corner provides it and we are lapping it up. A few quid buys you a taste of the exotic and a temporary escape from the mundane. Have a good coffee in a good atmosphere and you head back to the office feeling just a little pampered after your cheap treat.

 So it was for me. With the aroma for my decaff, skinny cappuccino still hovering I walked the few steps back to my office ready to face the afternoon. And did I close the deal…of course I did!

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