“A South African academic named Sarita Pillay Gonzalez noticed the aesthetic in Cape Town in the late 2010s, when she was working there at an urbanism research organisation. Gonzalez saw it as a form of gentrification, or even an echo of colonialism in a postcolonial country. Generically minimalist coffee shops were popping up on Kloof Street in Cape Town. When we spoke, Gonzalez identified them by their “long wooden tables, wrought-iron finishings, those lightbulbs that hang, hanging plants”. The aesthetic itself was spreading into different venues as well: beer halls, gastropubs, art galleries, Airbnbs. She had noticed a similar transformation in north-east Minneapolis while she was living there in 2016, where warehouse buildings were turned into coffee shops, microbreweries, and co-working offices – all common indicators of a gentrifying neighbourhood.

“According to Gonzalez, the style marked ‘a globally accessible space. You’re able to hop from Bangkok to New York to London to South Africa to Mumbai and you can find that same feel. You can ease into that space because it’s such a familiar space.’ The homogeneity contrasted with the overall hipster philosophy of the 2010s, namely, that by consuming certain products and cultural artefacts you could proclaim your own uniqueness apart from the mainstream crowd – in this case a particular coffee shop rather than an obscure band or clothing brand. ‘The irony of it all is that these spaces are supposed to represent spaces of individuality, but they’re incredibly monotonous,’ Gonzalez said.”

— “The Tyranny of the Algorithm, Why Every Coffee Shop Looks the Same,” The Guardian, Jan. 2024

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