Mirror Magazine

Mirror Magazine

Coffee culture and the ‘cool thing’
By Marisa de Silva
From way back Sri Lanka has been known as essentially a tea drinking country. What with British colonization and tea estates cropping up all over the island, and tea being one of the country’s main exports, it was one of the most-consumed products at the time. However, somewhere down the line, that long-established ‘tea culture’ transformed itself into the hip and happening ‘coffee culture’.

“Let’s go for a coffee…” seems to be quite a frequently used phrase among the youth nowadays. What exactly led to this change in culture and among what segment of society has this change taken place?

From days gone by, drinking tea has always had the image of being more of a formal get-together of parents, grand parents and their friends, enjoying a ‘cuppa tea’ in the garden or on the porch. Although many young people can’t do without their morning tea, the image essentially associated with the beverage was that it was mostly preferred by older generations.

Then along came the ‘winds of change’ from the West, where coffee houses were the ‘in’ places to hang out. So, in keeping with the usually Sri Lankan way of picking up whatever the West sends our way, the ‘coffee culture’ caught on here. Together with numerous catchy-named coffee houses sprouting up in very convenient locations around town, came the ardent followers of the ‘coffee way of life’, who deemed themselves the ‘in’ crowd.

Many of these places have a very easy-going atmosphere and one doesn’t have to leave as soon as you’ve finished having your snack, so people find it the perfect opportunity to just kick back with family or friends and have a pleasant outing.

However for others, the ‘coffee culture’ is essentially about ‘image’. As Tara (18) says, “Most of my friends who frequent these cafés can’t even afford to do so, but because it’s the ‘happening’ place to be, that’s where you’ll find them.”

Young people can either be trendsetters or followers; so like it or not, most youth belong to either one of the two categories. If a person is a trendsetter then, this won’t really affect him or her, but, if one just happens to fall into the other category, then most probably, being at the coffee house, is the be-all and end-all of their entire existence!

Many say that although they use the term ‘coffee’, in reality it may not be (and more often than not isn’t) coffee at all that they end up having but, rather an ice cream or a sandwich or maybe even a juice! So, this coffee business is in reality more of a term, rather than people actually having become a new generation of ‘coffaholics’. “Most of us just go to a coffee joint to chat or hang out, rather than to actually drink coffee,” says Sam (20), adding that, “if at all, we’d have a snack or ice cream, but it’s quite rarely that we have a coffee”.

Going back to the fact that the youth, in particular, have supposedly strayed from the age-old custom of drinking tea, we found out that the reason behind it was in fact because nobody had initiated a change of image for tea. Tea remained as it always had been; a consumer good associated with the older generation. Although, there have been many efforts, quite successful at that, which promote the ‘iced tea’ concept (I’m quite a fan of it myself!) the traditional form of tea has yet to join the ‘hip’ culture.

“Most often we go to coffee houses because there isn’t any other kind of place to go hang out at,” says Yohan (23). With regard to whether he opts for coffee over tea, he stated quite matter-of-factly that, “it’s simply because there are hardly any ‘tea outlets’, leaving us with little or no choice in the matter.”

Therefore, we see that it may not be that there are so many people who are partial to coffee, but rather an influx of youth who just want somewhere to feel at home, (other than for their own homes, that is) and just soak in the atmosphere. “Whenever we have nothing to do, we just get together and go for a coffee, to while away the time,” says Taahiyah (22). So, although on the face of it, the modern age may seem to be in line with the rapidly growing ‘coffee age’, ‘coffee’ is in effect used as just an excuse to take a break from the everyday rat race, we call life.

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