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Home / Cafe Culture / Coffee In A Cold ClimateIt is cold in Edinburgh. And wet. It is technically summer, though, and fashion dictates that clothes must be thin and light and drinks must be iced. Every morning you can see men and women wandering to work in thin, loose-fitting clothes, clutching their iced coffees in blue, arthritic fists.
About five years ago a company called California Coffee arrived in Edinburgh and started selling coffee from stalls set up in old Police boxes. Buying coffee from these stalls was a particularly Scottish form of retail torture: the vendor was warm and sheltered; the customer was cold and wet. When Starbucks invaded the city the franchised coffee drinkers deserted the street stalls and began to enjoy their coffee in a warm and clean environment. In January of this year a new California Coffee stall appeared on George Street¹. Unlike the company's previous stalls this was not a refurbished Police box but a barrow, similar to something you would have seen a Cockney coffee seller pushing through the streets of Victorian London. In the six months since the stall has been on George Street it has managed to hold its own against the Starbucks on the next block. Customers do not mind queuing, cold and wet, as long as the person serving them is colder and wetter. During the summer there has been a long queue of people waiting to buy iced coffees, which means that the vendors are not only cold and wet but also spend a large part of their working day with their hands in a bucket of ice. (¹) George Street runs parallel to Prince's Street. Prince's Street is used exclusively by tourists, because you can see the castle from it. George Street is the street that residents use to avoid the tourists. About the AuthorSteve Gaythorpe (steveg@clearcut.co.uk) is the editor of half a dozen whisky brand web sites based in Scotland. As well as single malt Scotch whisky and coffee his favourite beverage is Chai - which is difficult to find in Scotland. |
