Craft Coffee Experience Centre in Ballygunge hosted an afternoon dedicated to the future of coffee in Calcutta, with founders of popular cafes around the city joining in for an insightful conversation around what makes cafes stick with today’s crowd. Participants in the discussion included Dipraj Das, founder, Craft Coffee; Prateek Didwania, founder, Pico & Snacking; Devipriya Guha, founder, This Must Be The Place; Deep Batra, founder, KettleBerry; Sonali Lakhotia, founder, Potboiler Coffee; Ankita Sarkar, coffee pro influencer and traveller; Arshdeep Singh, founder, Artsy — Coffee & Culture; Debanuj Dasgupta, founder, Kaldi Bean; and Vinay Manglani, founder, Colab Coffee Calcutta. Indrajit Lahiri, founder of Foodka, a channel documenting Bengali food culture, history and street food, moderated the chat.
The age of social media has made cafes more than just F&B outlets. Ambience, decor and “Instagrammable” aesthetics are extensions attached to cafes by Gen Z notions of aesthetics, which must be incorporated if cafes are to stay relevant in this market. Niche conversations around coffee have also started unfolding among the coffee enthusiasts of today, who see coffee as more than just a drink to recharge, but as a whole creative experience. Home-brewing sessions and setting up coffee stations at home have become very common among today’s coffee enthusiasts who are building an intrinsic relationship with coffee. The discussion featured insights from the cafe founders and enthusiasts on the balance between aesthetics and culinary innovations which can help cafes stay relevant through the years.
Batra highlighted the importance of starting from the grassroots, which will allow cafe owners to capture a steady market and satisfy every demographic. “While we speak of growing sophistication in Calcutta’s coffee culture, with high-end cafes drawing major attention, it is also important for us to remember that connecting with the whole community is essential for long-term growth. The menu and budget should be adjusted to fit a wide range of palettes and diverse customer groups,” he said.
Speaking about the importance of visual sophistication and ambience to be upheld by cafes in the age of social media, Singh said: “Every corner of Calcutta is brimming with conversations around art and culture. Thanks to social media, the F&B industry has now come to the heart of not just culinary but wider cultural conversations as well. Hence, for massive F&B projects, thought must be put into visual aesthetics, decor and ambience which create a holistic experience for the customer.”
“The objective of this chat for all of us is to realise that in Calcutta, cafe owners and founders should not be competitors, but collaborators working together to take the coffee culture forward in the city. For a long time, most cafe founders and owners have been working in silos. However, creating a strongly connected community of like-minded people is important to deliver our best to Calcutta’s highly dynamic market, and put Calcutta’s coffee culture on the larger map,” said Das.
“It was a highly enriching experience to take in the various perspectives regarding coffee culture in Calcutta raised by the cafe owners and founders. These conversations should be held more frequently so that we all can have an exchange of ideas,” said Lahiri.