{"id":533,"date":"2025-04-06T08:29:31","date_gmt":"2025-04-06T08:29:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nyujournalismprojects.org\/dispatches\/?p=533"},"modified":"2025-04-06T08:40:52","modified_gmt":"2025-04-06T08:40:52","slug":"pariss-anti-cafe-cafes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nyujournalismprojects.org\/dispatches\/2025\/04\/06\/pariss-anti-cafe-cafes\/","title":{"rendered":"Paris\u2019s Anti-Caf\u00e9 Caf\u00e9s"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The phrase \u201cParisian Caf\u00e9\u201d conjures up a movie stereotype: Europeans whiling away their afternoon outdoors, drinking an espresso and chatting with a cigarette in hand. That image has been immortalized in La La Land<\/em>, Before Sunset<\/em> and Am\u00e9lie<\/em>. In fact, we have become so acquainted with associating caf\u00e9s to Paris that in the thumbnail for Emily in Paris<\/em>, Netflix  features Emily sitting in an outdoor caf\u00e9 with a cocktail, not in front of the Eiffel Tower, or the Arc de Triomphe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet, COVID\u2019s impact did not spare France\u2019s food and beverage industry. The pandemic resulted in 100,000 workers leaving the industry<\/a>, and as a result, Paris has lost around 500 cafes from 2002 to 2023. Still, in the midst of these dwindling numbers, work caf\u00e9s have opened as the post-pandemic remote work routine has drawn people to the idea of getting out to work spaces. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

A new type of caf\u00e9 offers work space and free light food and drink for an hourly charge. This payment model is commonly referred to as the \u201cAnti-caf\u00e9\u201d model, after the pioneering chain Anticaf\u00e9. Nuage Caf\u00e9, Hubsy caf\u00e9 & coworking and Craft Caf\u00e9 are other spaces in Paris which have adopted this operation style which has become popular with both Parisian workers and students. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Methods to \u201cromanticize studying\u201d have become a popular topic of conversation, especially among high school and college female students who share their personal attempts on TikTok<\/a>. One such means of jumping in on this trend is to set up shop at a local cafe for a change of environment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201c[I]n recent years, the French caf\u00e9 scene has undergone a transformation,\u201d Poppy Pearce wrote in an article<\/a> in France Today. \u201cWith the rise of home-working and freelancing, many have turned to caf\u00e9s as an alternative workspace.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
A TikTok posted by a young female which
says “This is your sign to spend your
afternoon working in a caf\u00e9” <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

At Nuage Caf\u00e9 in Paris\u2019s Latin Quarter, customers are given a white card which, once scanned, monitors the amount of time spent at the cafe. After check-in, they are offered a free array of crackers, tea cakes, biscuits, and other finger foods laid out on trays and in glass jars, ready to be self-served in the colorful plates set aside. The barista behind the counter in the corner also offers free lattes and refills among other beverages. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Nuage Caf\u00e9’s food and drinks area<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

One recent March afternoon, Jasmine Deonandan – an American student temporarily studying in Paris – decided to work on her presentation slides at Nuage. Sitting among the ambient sound of clicking laptop keys and rustling pages from people working nearby, she momentarily turned her attention to the slice of tea cake and glass of hot chocolate by her computer. Once she had had her fill of food and work, she returned the card at the front, and paid a \u20ac6 per hour charge.   <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI think especially being in Paris, a lot of the cafes are more of a leisure time activity,\u201d Deonandan said. \u201cBut I think that the pay per hour structure encourages me to do as much work as I can to make the payment worthwhile.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Still, working at caf\u00e9s is not only attractive to students, but a range of different clients. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As a writer for France Media Group, Pearce enjoys working at caf\u00e9s because it limits distractions. \u201cI’m very inspired by peer pressure, so if I see other people working I have to work just as hard as them,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nevertheless, Pearce admits to prefer working at cafes with a typical payment model as opposed to the Anti-caf\u00e9 one. \u201c\u20ac5 an hour doesn\u2019t sound like a lot but sometimes, you know, I’d want to be there for about three hours, and that’s \u20ac15 so it does add up,\u201d Pearce said.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Still, she acknowledges that it is an appropriate model from a business point of view because \u201cif someone goes to a cafe, works there and takes up a table for four hours, and only buys one coffee which realistically takes 15 minutes to have, [the cafe] could have been creating so much more revenue.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Garance Dagher, a staff member at Nuage Caf\u00e9, says younger clients typically stay for about two hours while some business owners spend their entire work day there. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

For such reasons, it is a challenge for cafes with traditional payment models to have such clients who wish to work extensively from there. Several places have been trying to combat this problem by putting up \u201cno laptop\u201d or \u201claptop free zone\u201d signs, so that they can have a quicker customer turnaround and maintain the more traditional atmosphere of a French caf\u00e9 where ideas are known to be exchanged through conversation.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Still, Pearce draws an interesting comparison between the atmosphere at traditional caf\u00e9s and today\u2019s work caf\u00e9s by reminiscing on the Enlightenment period during which intellectuals like Hemingway and Franklin would exchange ideas sitting in caf\u00e9s in Paris.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIn a way, ideas are still being passed, maybe not verbally in the way that they were back [then], but there’s a rise in freelance workers, and them using cafes as a base, I suppose, could mirror that previous culture,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The phrase \u201cParisian Caf\u00e9\u201d conjures up a movie stereotype: Europeans whiling away their afternoon outdoors, drinking an espresso and chatting with a cigarette in hand. That image has been immortalized in La La Land, Before Sunset and Am\u00e9lie. In fact, we have become so acquainted with associating caf\u00e9s to Paris that in the thumbnail for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26,"featured_media":535,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[46,14,47],"class_list":["post-533","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-trends","tag-cafes","tag-paris","tag-work-culture"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nyujournalismprojects.org\/dispatches\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/533","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nyujournalismprojects.org\/dispatches\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nyujournalismprojects.org\/dispatches\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nyujournalismprojects.org\/dispatches\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/26"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nyujournalismprojects.org\/dispatches\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=533"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/nyujournalismprojects.org\/dispatches\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/533\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":541,"href":"https:\/\/nyujournalismprojects.org\/dispatches\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/533\/revisions\/541"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nyujournalismprojects.org\/dispatches\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/535"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nyujournalismprojects.org\/dispatches\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=533"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nyujournalismprojects.org\/dispatches\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=533"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nyujournalismprojects.org\/dispatches\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=533"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}