"Coffee mate” Exploring Perth Café Consumption Culture

“Coffee-mate”

   Exploring Perth Café Consumption Culture

I explored Perth’s coffee culture in previous weeks, out of a handful of cafés I was impressed by a select few cafes. The cafes which piqued my interest are San Churros, Dome, The Coffee Club, and Jamaica Blue. Cafes in today’s culture have been more impactful than ever before. Cafes have become a medium to discuss important office meetings, family events, celebrations, and so on.

Consumer consumptions here are driven by customer satisfaction, perceived value, customer loyalty, service quality, a food offering, physical environment and word of mouth. When I visited San Churros, I was dazzled by the physical environment, for a few seconds I felt I was in Spain, right from the menu which included Spanish coffee, hot chocolate, milkshakes, and their famous churros. This cafe has done an excellent job of combining ambiance with Spanish delicatessen.

My experience at Dome was stunning. Dome is more of an Australian based café with mouth-watering soups and classic feel. Dome offers amazing service quality and exceptional food offering. Dome is a perfect place for elderly people and family outings. The Coffee Club has a mellow ambience more suited for readers or students who wants to focus on tasks. Jamaica Blue has a radiant vibe which captivates teens and outgoing millennials. Jamaica Blue has an Eastern European vibe which blends with their fascinating milkshakes and knocks out the menu. I’m going to use these cafés as a parallel case to my reading on consuming culture.

The coffee club was the most innovative café I have seen in Perth. I went to the coffee club to have my evening coffee with my friends. The ambience of the café was amazing and warm-welcoming. I went and ordered two mocha for me, and my friend then proceeded to pay the bill. The staff stopped us from paying via card and told us to download the coffee club App for paying the bill so we can get the loyalty points. I paid through App and tasted the frothy mocha and observed the atmosphere inside the coffee club. I saw people scanning bar code from that App to pay for coffee; I noticed this was the best way of customer retention for their business. They’re creating brand awareness through App; the identity confirmation here is the powerful tool to generate brand loyalty [1].

The App which I downloaded captures the user attention even after they leave the café. At first, I got a reminder for the review, as I liked the coffee taste so much I gave the full star review and moreover they’re sending a daily notification to the App as the reminder for the consumer to consume coffee, these Collaborative marketing techniques are shaping consumer relationship with brands [2]. The experience with this coffee club was really refreshing, and these new concepts, which include the QR payment gateway, gifts or loyalty points and moreover the service from the staff in guiding, were astonishing.

The next café I want to discuss is Dome. Dome is a big chain of café in Perth,  wherever suburb I go I used to see Dome. When I went morning to Dome, I observed group people having a popular English breakfast. I also noticed individuals who had their own private desires are converted to take the English breakfast. When I asked them for a coffee, they recommended me to take an English breakfast and told me that these are the signature food of Dome and I should try. I tasted the food and liked it so much, then after sometime when I was taking some notes, I realized that the basic needs here were driven by the culture in my case. [3]

As Dome is the biggest chain of café, it is also one of the best tourist attraction. The café doesn’t provide just the coffee but an experience that tourists would remember. The atmosphere, the food, the culture they consume is something they remember like a memory. Moreover, from Dome people collect souvenirs such as coffee beans and other gifts as a memento of a visit [4].

Jamaica Blue is one of the most popular cafés in Perth. When I first saw the advertisement on social media, I planned to visit the café. This café had a minimalist décor with signature dishes filled on the side. When I asked my friend how he knows about this café, he replied that he refers to it on a blog, and this shows that they clearly achieved in marketing strategies. They attract massive tourism through “mass marketing”  not only advertising online but also trying to reach a diverse group audience and provide conspicuous consumption [5]. People here more than the coffee they consume a lot of other things.

San Churros are undoubtfully hero of the café, their popular Spanish styled authentic recipe creating new trends in Australia. The people here consume their time to relax nights with friends and enjoy their chocolate buzzing dishes. People consume this place to celebrate being together and share their stories or simply catch-up weekends with friends. San churros provide the experience of dining, shopping, entertainment, education, and culture. The unknown fact of San Churros is that they also train and educate people to become baristas or Spanish chef. Moreover, they sell coffee beans, churros, and other things.

San Churros not only sell products physically but also through online. The e-commerce platform on the internet market enables us to reach the potential audience to sell products with ease, and these include mail order or other platform internet shopping like Uber eats [6].

Along with these good experiences, I would like to share the bitter ones that I encountered recently. Last week my friend and I went to a café and ordered 2 espressos and a cookie. While placing the order, I asked them to make it extra strong with triple espresso as we had a long day ahead. We sat there for quite a while, and I realized that it’s been over 20 minutes and we haven’t received our order yet. So, I approached the counter and asked how long it will take for my order. They said just five more minutes as they were short-staffed that day and there were a lot of consumers in the morning. I told them that’s fine, but I got to go so please make it fast. Right after that, a staff approached me and handed over my coffee. But it turned out to be a latte. I went to the counter again and said I was given a wrong order as I placed an order for triple espresso. So, instead of replacing my actual order, they started arguing with me and didn’t even replace my drink at last. I didn’t expect this kind of working culture at that café.

 I was also refused for a refund until their manager came to the site and solved the matter. This was one of the worst experiences that I had recently as it is their responsibility to make sure that their consumers are happy with the services they provide.

Moreover, there was another incident when I booked a table for 2, but when I actually got there that said no reservation was made under my name and as a customer, I was quite disappointed.

One scientific research has found that coffee around 200 milligrams of caffeine in it improves problem-solving skills and memories [7]. It is also said that it helps us to increase concentration and boost creativity. Also consuming in the café help me to get out of several distractions. I also reckon the biggest drawback of my exploration was in some café you may consume negative vibes. For instance, one of the cafés I went to was filled with hard music, and it’s also that we tend to consume a lot of food items in the process of doing work and thereby spend a lot of money.

By exploring nearly all the café in the city.  I now have a clear understanding of how consumption culture in café works. In this process, I really spend a lot of time to learn and also filled my stomach and satisfied my taste buds with mouth-watery food and frothy brewed coffee.

I was also mesmerized by the different way of approach to consuming things. More than having food, I observed the people and their consumer behavior in the café.  Overall I think all the café clearly achieved in giving basic needs as consumption to people. But some of the café I visited also gave me a feel like a restaurant as they were more concentrated on the food selling process.

Cafés being one of the best kick-starts of my day with a positive vibe consumption and ever-friendly smiling staff make me energized. Being my school work or discussion with my colleagues, I prefer dealing in a café. The biggest benefit I consider working things on café is that it not only satisfies the basic needs of consuming food but also bonds the consumer-relationship and create positive synergy and enrich the consumers with motivation.