Dutch Coffee Shops

When you pay for someone’s coffee, or they pay for yours, there is the instinctive need to mirror their actions. And this is suboptimal for all parties involved.

No I’m not talking about *that* kind of Dutch coffee shops. I’m talking about the regular coffee shops, where you get coffee (and some snacks), and the payment dynamics there.

Most coffee shops are “prepaid”, which means you order and pay for your coffee (and snacks) at the counter, after which you get served at your table. While the nature of coffee shops, that generally allow people to linger indefinitely (my wife calls them “computer class”, with the number of people working on computers there; a good example of this is Third Wave on CMH Road), means that there is no “obvious” time to bill, that coffee shops are prepaid also serve another social purpose - of splitting bills.

Generated by Dall-E

Over the last 3-4 months, ever since I started planning on my startup, I’ve been meeting lots of people, with most of these meetings happening at coffee shops. I have an office now, but since it’s in one corner of town (JP Nagar), I’ve only done a couple of meetings there, preferring to meet the large majority of people in coffee shops.

Now, when you meet someone for a meal (or coffee), the inevitable question is “who pays”. And the thing with eating / drinking with acquaintances is that this can create some interesting social questions.

For starters, there is the agency question with lots of gifting (this deserves its own blog post). I’ve written here about how, by gifting my family apples, my relatives diminished the total amount of enjoyment I had from apples this season. Similarly, if I “gift you coffee” or get you to “gift me coffee”, we are imposing our choices on the other.

So, when you order together with an acquaintance (NOT a friend), there is this social pressure to match what the other person is ordering. If she has a coffee, you have a coffee as well. If she has cake, you feel like you need to mirror her by having cake as well. And not everyone wants to have coffee at coffee shops - there have been days when I’ve done 3-4 back to back meetings at (different - this is a whole blogpost in itself) coffee shops, and not wanted to ingest so much caffeine.

And this is where the prepaid system of most coffee shops comes to play. One thing I’ve generally been doing is, if I get there first, I order and get my coffee (or whatever) and sit down. The counterparty arrives, sees me with my coffee, and goes and orders their stuff, which then presently arrives, and we can simply focus on the conversation. In general I’ve seen the opposite also true - most people I’ve met, if they’ve got there early, would have ordered for themselves before I’ve got there.

When you pay for someone’s coffee, or they pay for yours, there is the instinctive need to mirror their actions. And this is suboptimal for all parties involved.

This is brilliant. Not only does this save the social dynamics of who pays for a business meeting (less complicated - typically the person who needs the meeting more should pay. Here it’s largely me), but it also (more importantly) allows people to have agency on what they are going to have. And there is no pressure to match.

So I have had cakes when other people have had coffee. I’ve had just one coffee when the other person has had a cake, coffee AND nuts. I’ve done “half lunch meetings” (where only one person has lunch) at cafes. All this has been enabled by the typical ordering dynamics at the coffee shops I frequent.

There have only been a couple of issues - there have been times where I’ve waited for the other person to come before I order, only because I want to pay for them. And then they have arrived and insisted on paying for the whole thing - this is value destructive. The converse is also true - people have waited for me hoping to pay for me, but I’ve insisted (maybe I’ve robbed them of their agency this way?).

Finally, there is this Araku Coffee shop in Indiranagar which follows a post-paid system, and that can mess with the wonderful arrangement I described above. When you ask for the cheque, it is difficult to go dutch, and that means you want to broadly mirror what the other person orders. The last three times I’ve been to Araku, I’ve just let the counterparty pay for me.

Anyway, the moral of the story is - when you’re meeting someone at a coffee shop, if you get there first, just pay for your own stuff, and start eating / drinking before they arrive. It infinitely reduces social complications.