
The Diverse Pleasures of the All-Day Café - pepys
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/annals-of-gastronomy/the-diverse-pleasures-of-the-all-day-cafe
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deadmetheny
As comfortable as this sounds for a customer, I must wonder how the business
plan pans out for the café itself. Table turnover is important for wait staff
who want to maximize their tips, and food service already works on very thin
margins as it is. Making food items expensive to compensate for people sitting
there for hours seems like it's not going to foster the idea of sitting around
ordering drinks and meals all day.

I do rather like this idea in theory, but I'm not sure how the reality of it
works out.

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acmecorps
I think this is only for American culture. Where I’m from (Malaysia), we have
these Indian restaurants called Mamak where it’s opened for 24hrs and people
hangout there. It’s extremely popular. We don’t have tipping too.

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tomcam
Nice! Uh, how do you make that work with Manhattan rents of $10-$100 per
square foot monthly?

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thatmiddleway
American here: Do places like this exist en mass in European countries and
this is something that's coming fresh to America? Most American restaurants
seem to try and hustle you out, not invite you to stay for another meal.

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srs_sput
From my experience, this is quite common in Europe. I can't think of a cafe
that I have been to that I ever felt rushed. I have always needed to call the
server over to get my check to leave.

The cafes are where people relax and people watch. No need to rush.

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mercer
Yeah, it's a bit odd for me to realize that this is not a normal thing
everywhere. I've spent quite a bit of my student years showing up at a
restaurant/cafe at around 10:00, hanging out until 18:00 or so, friends of
mine coming and going, and deciding to stay for dinner and possibly some
singer-songwriter performance.

While cost kept me from doing it on a daily basis, I quite regularly ended up
spending entire days (8+) hours at the hotspot-du-jour, only leaving for brief
periods for some errands nearby.

