Coffee bar menus

THE FOOD CLUB

Like many of my fellow men, I spend part of almost every day in coffee bars. If I'm not meeting with friends in between meals, I'm working on my laptop, sitting out a power cut in my house or escaping for an hour or three from my children and/or house guests.

And like most of my coffee-bar-visiting fellow men, I've become an expert at walking the tight-rope between ordering too much (the very purpose of a coffee bar over a restaurant in the first place) and getting kicked out for sitting for three hours nursing an espresso.

While I usually end up in a branch of Costa whenever convenient (their coffee stands head and shoulders above the competition), there's one observation

I have about all three coffee bar majors: Barista, Café Coffee Day and Costa. None of the snacks seduce me from the shelves. I find this inexplicable. They pay the same amount of rent, square foot for square foot, as a restaurant does, yet don't have the capacity for charging a restaurant's prices.

The only way to close the gap is to seduce the customer with snacks so outrageously sinful that nobody can possibly refuse.

Consider the facts: No coffee bar charges more than Rs 50 for a cappuccino and around half that for an espresso. Occupancy goes through natural peaks and troughs during the day: early mornings, lunch and dinner are when you'll get the pick of tables, the most luxuriant sofa and the best view.

Table occupancy is usually immutable. What you can do is force your customer to order more than he wants to, a common enough practice in the f&b world.

The other day, the subject was brought home to me forcibly when I had to choose between a tomato sandwich and a lemon muffin. There was no ham sandwich, no croissant, no brioche, no biscotti. In short, nothing that is available at coffee bars internationally.

Some of the problem stems from the fact that our desi coffee bars outsource their snacks. And when they don't, the alternative is hardly sophisticated: I have been at a coffee bar and was horrified to see one of the waiters walk in with his shopping: a giant loaf of sandwich bread, tomatoes and cucumbers from the sabziwallah "� all this during operating hours, in full view of the customers.

Does a citrus tang (as in lemon muffins and lemon chicken sandwiches) go well with coffee? My own view is that it does not, but I'm prepared to defer to the tastes of others. Give us chicken, but please, can we have slices, and not half-hearted flakes that have been mashed to death with tomato sauce, diced cabbage and myriad other ingredients.

And while we are on the subject, cling film-wrapped snacks in your glass cabinet may keep your wares fresh longer, but they hardly inspire the customer to part with his cash.

marryamhreshii@yahoo.co.in