Why Coffee Shops Are Increasing in Popularity on British High Streets

1. Why Coffee Shops Are Increasing in Popularity on British High Streets Today, more and more people are choosing to meet for a nice cup of coffee rather than a pint of beer or glass of wine. Furthermore, recent figures are indicated that while coffee shops are on the increase across the country, the number of bars, nightclubs and pubs on the British high street has fallen. Increase in Coffee Shops However, despite the number of coffee shops, cafes and fast food restaurants increasing by around 6,000 across Scotland, Wales and England between 2011 and 2016, there are still far more pubs in British town centres than coffee shops. The figures were collated by the Local Data Company and did not include Northern Ireland. They were collected by individuals who walked up and down high streets around mainland UK. These figures showed the biggest increase in leisure businesses in areas such as Wales, the West Midlands, Yorkshire, and the Humber. This contrasted with Greater London where there was a 0.3 per cent decrease.

2. Leisure Businesses Among the businesses that saw the biggest increases were lounge bars, cake makers, juice bars and coffee shops. There were falls, however, in the number of snooker halls, comedy clubs, bingo halls and internet cafes. The rise in the number of coffee shops on the high street has a lot to do with American shows such as Seinfeld and Friends, according to Professor Jonathan Morris of the University of Hertfordshire. Professor Morris is a historian who has studied the popularity of the coffee shop. He believes that the culture of coffee shops in the UK began during the nineties when the aforementioned shows were popular. He said, “People socialise during the day or after work rather than evenings now. Places like snooker and bingo halls take a bigger chunk of time while meeting for coffee doesn’t take long. To halt the decline, pubs needs to develop their daytime offer.” The Original article Published at Good Cup Coffee Blog - https://goodcupcoffee.co.uk/2017/01/24/why-coffee-shops-are-increasing-in-popularity-on- british-high-streets/