How Korean Cafés Are Different

Korean Coffee · Part 2

A Korean cafe is built to be occupied, not passed through. Once you know that, the tall ceilings, the outlets at every table and the four-hour customers all make sense.

01 The room is the product

Cafes here are larger than visitors expect.

Two floors is common, and so are high ceilings and a full glass front. Money that a European cafe might put into the machine goes into the room.

Seating is designed for staying.

Tables are spaced further apart than in most countries, chairs have backs, and power outlets sit at the tables rather than hidden behind a sofa. None of that is accidental.

There is almost no standing bar.

The Italian model, where you drink an espresso at the counter in ninety seconds, barely exists here. You order, you take a buzzer, you sit down.

02 What people actually do in them

A cafe is a study room and an office.

Students revise, freelancers work, job seekers prepare for exams. There is a word for people who study in cafes, and the behaviour is ordinary enough to have needed one.

It is also where meetings happen.

Housing is expensive and homes are small, so people meet friends in cafes rather than at home. A cafe fills the role that a living room plays elsewhere.

Nobody will move you along.

Sitting for three hours on one americano is normal and staff will not hint at it. Some places post a time limit at peak hours, but that is the exception and it is announced openly.

03 Things that surprise visitors

Laptops and bags get left on tables.

People step out to take a call and leave a laptop sitting open. Visitors find this alarming. It reflects how safe the environment is rather than how careless the owner is, though it is still not advice worth copying on your first day.

You will get a buzzer.

A plastic disc that lights up and vibrates when your drink is ready. Take it to your table and bring it back with the cup.

Clearing your own table is the norm.

There is a return station near the counter, usually with separate bins for ice, liquid, cups and lids. Staff will not mind if you miss it, but everyone else will be doing it.

Card payment is universal.

Many places no longer take cash at all. A foreign card sometimes fails at small independents, so having one backup method saves a conversation.

04 Reading a cafe before you sit down

The layout tells you what the place is for.

A minute at the door saves you from sitting in the wrong kind of room.

What you see	What it means	Good for
Outlets at every seat, large tables	Built for long stays	Working for hours
Small counter, few seats, bags of beans	Roaster focused on the coffee	Drinking something interesting
Dessert case front and centre	Cake is the main sale	Meeting someone
Low prices, no seating, a queue	Takeaway chain	A cup on the way somewhere

The big room and the good cup are not always the same place.

If you came for the coffee rather than the seat, the small counter with beans stacked behind it is usually the better bet.

First Penguin Coffee Company We roast in Korea, to order, and we supply and train the small counters described above. Our coffees are listed under Beans in the top menu. Enquiries: 010-3444-1721

Next: why there are so many cafes in Korea, and what that does to the ones that survive.