Study title

This research aimed to explore cafes, their working conditions, customer interactions and connection into daily routines, through multi-site ethnography. Overt video-assisted observation was used in 5 cafes across the UK in naturally organised settings. A video camera was left recording all day, with minimal disruption to the setting, in Cafe Nero (Manchester City Centre, Glasgow City Centre, and East Sheen, London), Offshore (Glasgow) and Spoon (Edinburgh). Data comprises of 24 videos of counters with 24 related images and an internet page of the data compiled, 20 videos of encounters with 20 related images and an internet page of the data compiled, and finally 37 videos of entering with 37 related images and an internet page of the data compiled. The data compiled on html. pages form a topically organised visual index of clips edited out from the longer footage, each one being an instance of some recognisable action or feature of the cafe. A total of 5 days in autumn 2003 were recorded.

Cafes serving cappuccino have become prominent in many cityscapes over the last five years providing not just frothy coffee and snacks but as importantly new spaces for people to meet, relax, work, write, read and most of all talk. In the history of European civil society cafes played a key role which they only recently seem to have regained in the UK. From July 2002 until December 2004 this project will be investigating the role of cafes in urban communities in the UK, be they neighbourhood, work or virtual communities. It is assessing the cafe's changing relevance as a site for civic life and public culture. The project’s methodology is a multi-site ethnography of over a dozen different kinds of cafes, their working conditions, customer interactions, and tracing the cafes' connection into daily routines.