Coffee shop buzz draw out India's young

The cafes are a boon too for growing Indian chains that have caught a liberal wave of changing social habits in a land more known for its tea drinkers. The absence, for the moment, of global competitor Starbucks has also helped.

Barista and rivals Cafe Coffee Day and Javagreen attract young people with good jobs and cash in their pockets, at a time when many traditional meeting places have been demolished to make way for new buildings in India's fast-growing cities.

From a handful of outlets six years ago, the three big chains have nearly 600 outlets between them, and plan many more.

Cafe Coffee Day is the oldest brand in the market. It has mushroomed to 288 outlets from just seven in 2000--and wants to expand to 500.

NO DRINKING PLEASE

Social change has helped Cafe Coffee Day, but so has lingering conservatism in a country where the young can escape the stern gaze of parents to a cafe but meeting in a bar is frowned upon.

"Hanging out with friends in a drinking place is never going to be as socially accepted as hanging out in a non-drinking place," said Sudipta Sengupta, Cafe Coffee Day's senior general manager of marketing.

Bangalore-based Cafe Coffee Day is just 10 years old but it has international dreams. It has opened a branch in Vienna, at the heart of Austria's cafe culture.

Young Indians seem happy to buy coffee at upwards of Rs 40 a cup, rather than tea from a street trader for as little as Rs 2.

Barista, which opened in 2000 with the aim of attracting upmarket coffee drinkers, plans to nearly double its chain to 250 outlets in India by early next year.

It is fun rather than caffeine that drives Ruhie Kumar, a 20-year-old student, to Barista in Mumbai.

"I don't like coffee that much but I like to hang out with my pals," she said, sitting with her friends, sipping a smoothie.

"It's an ideal place to flirt, date, discuss things and--most importantly--chill out," she said.

STARBUCKS LOOMS

Young spenders like Kumar attracted Reliance Infocomm to the sector. It hosts 125 Javagreen outlets in its telephone and Internet shops, hoping the aroma is good for business.

Javagreen Chief Operating Officer K R Chandrasekaran wants to expand beyond telephone shops to 400 to 500 outlets within a few years but the vision of the Indian firms may be countered by Starbucks Corp.

India and Italy are the only economies among the world's 12 largest without a Starbucks but that may be about to change.

A company spokeswoman said the Seattle-based retailer planned to enter South Asia within 18 months.

Chandrasekaran said the global rival could arrive in India as early as this year, perhaps through a tie-up with a local retailer such as Shopper's Stop.

Chandrasekaran expressed no fear of the huge rival, despite accusations from anti-corporate activists that Starbucks smothers local competitors.

"They will raise the profile of cafes. They will make it a little bit more aspirational," he said, adding that Starbucks might find it challenging to sell the high-margin food seen in its outlets elsewhere in the world.

FOREIGN INFLUENCE

Satellite television is credited with introducing young Indians to the cafe culture. When growing up in the 1980s in Kolkata Sengupta said she and her friends "didn't know what 'hanging out' was".

The cocoon fell away with the arrival of foreign TV shows. At the same time multinationals began hiring educated, tech-savvy Indians to write software and do back-office work and the government began freeing up the economy.

These moves opened the way to profound social change among a generation that increasingly prefers to sip lattes, rather than scan newspaper advertisements for arranged marriages.

"We don't have enough food to eat, but we all watch TV. And we talk on the mobiles," Sengupta said of her country of more than 1 billion people, which has more than 100 million TVs and nearly as many mobile phones.

"The young generation has really absorbed it. Now they look as if they've been born with a mobile phone and a laptop in their hand," she said.

No longer content to meet under the watchful eye of parents or in school canteens, young people sought somewhere new, and Cafe Coffee Day was the beneficiary of that, Sengupta said. An old-style coffee house was not attractive.

"It wasn't hip at all. It was a preserve of leftist thinking, poetry-spouting people," Sengupta said.

"We just happened with the solution at the right time. It just so happened that it was coffee. It could have been something else," she added.

"Sorry sir, you have to order another another coffee or leave" - this coming from the once ready-toplease, friendly neighbourhood coffee shops, is beginning to shock coffee lovers in the city.

"Seconds after I finished my coffee, it was cleared and I was faced with one of the coffee shop boys asking me to either order another coffee immediately or leave,"says Christopher William, a senior call centre executive, who loves his cuppa. "The reason given was the Saturday crowd.

But shouldn't the fact that I'd spent over Rs 250 there in an hour, be taken into consideration?"he asks. "It was very embarrassing. The coffee culture has caught on so much that we are now being pushed around,"he added.

"Time was when we were wooed with the warmest of smiles by the guys at the counter. Now, they just want you to gulp your coffee down and leave,"says Siddarth R, another coffee person.

"Coffee shops are just not like old times. They're packed and unfriendly. I don't feel like going to coffee shops anymore to unwind,"says media person K Raghava.

"We don't pay for just the coffee, you know,"says designer Leena M. "You pay for the ambience. You pay for a place to chill. Why else would anybody pay Rs 40 for a cup of coffee?"she asks.

A rude employee, meanwhile, argues that he can't have people sit down to chill after they're done: "I have a business to run, you'll have to leave if you don't order again.""This is typical Saturday behaviour.

They did this to me too,"says Jason S. "People come here for more than just coffee. You come here to relax. I have gone to crowded coffee shops and used the takeaway option if I found it full. I don't think they realise asking people to leave is bad for business in the long run. I'll never go back there,"he says.

But going by what the CEO of one of the coffee chains, Partha D. Gupta says, the rude behaviour may be individual incidents and is not policy.

"We believe that once a cup of coffee is bought and taken to a table, that table belongs to the customer as long as he or she wishes to stay. Our employees have only been advised to gently suggest an order to people they see sitting down for long hours and not ordering anything. Definitely not someone who's ordered or whose order has just been cleared."

Coffee shops are less attentive than they used to be, says IT person Madhu V. "Coffee flavours are not added properly and the worst crime of all - they sometimes give you lukewarm and cold coffee, when coffee should be served piping hot." "Get your basics right, guys,"he says.