Cape Town's two main coffee franchises are competing to create the best coffee experience in Cape Town.
Cape Town may not be part of the Starbucks Empire, but there are two places to get your caffeine fix in an urban designer setting, namely Seattle Coffee and Vida E Caffé, which offer Cape Town’s best coffee experience.
Seattle Coffee, Cape Town’s copycat franchise based on the famous Starbucks chain has been operating for close to a decade and has outlets – mostly in malls – all over Cape Town. Seattle Coffee has imitated Starbuck’s formula of offering an empowering, yet agonizing choice of coffee permutations and a similar caffeine cult language to express it.
While it may not match Starbucks 19,000 different coffee styles, many of the most popular global coffee idioms of Starbucks coffee lingua franca, such as the ubiquitous Grande Latte, are available. Starbucks speakers will have no problem communicating, although a few translations are in order: A “no-fun-grande-latte-with-wings” is equivalent to a decaffeinated tall latte to go (no supersizes here). Seattle Coffee’s exposed, burnt brick walls, distressed leather arm chairs, marble coffee tables and dark veneer floors in its franchises are standard Starbucks, as are the above average prices. Seattle, like Starbucks, offers a coffee experience beyond the drinking and charges for it.
Seattle’s main rival, Vida e Caffé (Life and Coffee, in Portuguese) popped up a few years ago to capitalize on the coffee experience market. A Portuguese coffee shop concept, with an emphasis on making the best coffee, offering Portuguese rolls and pastries, in an urban chic environment has expanded to dozens of franchises around Cape Town. Its trademark bold Ferrari red and white signage, faux wood grain counters, mosaic tiles, and white and stainless steel furniture targets trendy, creative, urbanites from models to film producers.
Vida offers a limited range of freshly baked, white bread rolls filled with Portuguese cold meat such as Chorizo sausage, as well as mozzarella, smoked salmon, and fried egg. Muffins are also displayed prominently and range from sweet pepper and feta, to four cheeses, to blueberry, white chocolate and others. Vida’s coffee is thick and rich and its foam is ultra-thick (because they use ultra-pasteurized nonfat milk as their secret ingredient)
Instead of learning coffee speak, its clients have become familiar with Portuguese ordering items like pao com salmao (salmon roll), and coffee gelado (iced coffee). The usually lusophone African staff from Mozambique or Angola, have been told to deliver a constant stream of noisy Portuguese to enliven the atmosphere and add to the caffeine buzz. Despite being a franchise, Vida has – through clever marketing – been able to retain its genuine one-off feel, essential for its clientele which prides itself on its individualism.
