In Europe it is quite common to meet a friend for coffee or tea and cake in the afternoon/early evening, and in bigger cities it possible to find a cafe open until 10 pm or even later.
They usually sell desserts and coffee/ tea and are seen as a normal way to socialise, when you are meeting a friend or going on a date. I’ve lived in London for many years and it is difficult to find a place to sit down and read/ or meet a friend for a quiet chat and tea after 5 pm.
What is the reason for that? Is there a licensing issue at play? I don’t really understand why cafes would miss out on business otherwise.
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Because we have a pub/bar culture rather than a cafe culture
We have a pub culture not a cafe culture. Pubs are where people meet friends in the evening, or restaurants if they want a meal. Therefore, there is not demand for cafes to stay open late, they are not missing out on lots of business by not doing so. If they were, they would be staying open.
That being said, in London at least I have noticed more cafes staying open later in recent years. There’s also been a massive rise in dessert bars like Creams, which tend to be open pretty late.
Probably because most of them will open for breakfast at 7am and they want to get home.
Most breakfast type cafes round here close mid afternoon.
Culturally, people go to pubs after work, not cafes. Ladies would go to cafes in the day, men to pubs in the evening.
Which means people aren’t in the cafes after shops close, so they close.
Things are changing a bit, with all the dessert cafes aimed at teenagers and Muslims, open late (not very quiet, though!), and many pubs offering coffee and tea and even cake.
Given the cost of rent in London, you’d think more pubs would work to capture the daytime cafe market – some have, very successfully (of course you then get your 3 year old tantrumming ‘Want go pub!’…), but perhaps Wetherspoons has captured most of it? Some cafes become more restauranty at night, but again, seems more common in the suburbs.
Tl;Dr – go to a quiet pub.
Cultural differences; cafes are not missing out on business because that business is in different venues in the evening.
That said, if you want late night cafes, look for areas with higher numbers of south asian immigration. Lots and lots of late night cafes serving populations that don’t drink or feel comfortable in the pub/bar social space.
Our local chain coffee shops stay open till 8pm but they are dead from 6pm, and I’m in one of the largest towns in the UK.
I think mainly because they have been open since 6am and have done most of the business they can do. The bulk of their customers are breakfast and lunch and by then you are hitting marginal returns. If they stay open for another few hours then you might get a few customers if you are lucky but you still have to pay wages and power bills to keep the places open so are likely not making much or making a loss. Pubs fill that time gap – so many now do food and coffees.
Here in Portugal cafes are multi purpose. I will go for a coffee, might have a beer, grab a pastry and follow it up with a brandy or some wine. In the UK most places do not have that sort of licensing.
“I don’t really understand why cafes would miss out on business otherwise.”
Maybe there is not the sufficient demand, and that the costs of staying open late outweigh any potential for profits.
Because after 6pm people here are drinking alcohol not coffee
Culture. Anywhere open after 6 in the UK has to contend with punch ups and cleaning up puke. This also happens anytime the sun comes out.
This question was asked recently and I answered along these lines…
1) A lot of cafes open early; at the more traditional and basic end some of their trade is early morning workers like builders.
2) As others are saying, we have a pub culture- you can just go and have a cup of tea or coffee or a soft drink in a pub. A cafe on its own will not make enough money through the evening.
What happens in Europe is that the “cafe culture” serves the whole menu throughout the day – so the people who are in pubs in the UK can be in these cafes also.
3) There are plenty of places that will do what you want, if you do not wish to be in a pub as such, but you just have to look for something that is not a cafe as such, since we think of ‘cafe’ as something that DOES close early and may well not serve alcohol. Unfortunately, a lot of these places are upmarket.
For example, I am not in London but I did live there for 20-25 years- when Mrs tmstms goes to the dentist in Leeds, I wait for her in Harvey Nichols or (the regional branch of) The Ivy. Now, these serve their whole menu all day like a continental cafe, but you will not find them by searching for ‘cafe’
Elsewhere in London I can think of…..on the South Bank- the Archduke or the hospitality in the concert halls and theatres, similar in the Barbican (used to have Searcy’s)….Caffe Caldesi near Wigmore Street.
Unfortunately, the answer is often upmarket.
4) Licensing? yeah- this IS a consideration but not a decisive one. The alcohol licence is not expensive, but the council will restrict the number of cafes and restaurants and pubs and the pubs are in general there already.
There are some major cities where cafes stay open til midnight. I know that because the one in my city centre does
Cos they open at 6-7am. It’s a long day
The biggest cost to cafes is wages. 6/7am until 6pm can be covered in a single shift, so anything more would require 2 shifts and all the costs which go along with that. Unless you are making enough extra money to justify a second shift, it isn’t worth it to stay open late.
Personally I can’t drink caffeine in the evening without it affecting my sleep so going to a cafe (which usually have a bad selection of drinks which aren’t tea or coffee) isn’t appealing.
I think there are lots of people like that.
Also in southern European countries, because of the heat, they would be up later so going to a cafe at 6 makes more sense. It’s the same in middle eastern countries where you would see families in cafes at 10pm at night. Here we do things earlier (cause it’s colder/sun goes down earlier in winter) so our tea/coffee/cake time is in the afternoon (traditionally high tea or afternoon tea).
Years ago a footballer from Spain joined a London club and said he was homesick and bored because “England closes at 5pm” (or words to that effect).
It stuck with me because it’s completely true and as an Englishmen I wish it wasn’t.
Yes there are pubs but there’s more to life than pubs. Even shops etc.. are open later in some parts of Europe.
Not enough business. For each hour after 6pm that it remains open they’d have to make enough money to cover the hourly wage of whoever is working, plus the cost of energy etc. With margins of about £1 a drink then they’d be losing money.
Most cafes won’t have any business. But there are quite a few pubs now which are almost cafes on the day (Lounge chain for example) who then turn into more of a chilled bar in the evening, and you can still get coffee all the way to 10pm.
They aren’t missing out on business. We’ve tried many times to adopt a cafe culture in this country, and people just don’t want it. We’ve got cafes near us who have tried late opening, and stopped doing it because paying staff to work those hours when basically nobody comes in wasn’t worth it.
You will usually find that in areas with difference enthinic balances, that there are such cafes open later, as there probably won’t be the pub culture locally to them.
You’ll frequently find such cafes for example in areas with Arab or Middle Eastern populations.
Because the staff there have lives to carry on with.
I wish we had a cafe culture. I would absolutely go out with friends and family for coffee on an evening.
Because it’s a different culture here in the UK. People go to bars to meet friends or a restaurant rather than cafes
Cafes in europe like that will also function as bars. None of our cafes have licenses. You can get a similar experience by ordering (bad) coffee from your pub.
In part because they serve the people in the offices and who are shopping. Despite flexible working most offices are still roughly 9 till 5 and most shops shut around 5. After that the town centres where the cafes are don’t see a lot of foot fall until it is time to go out for a meal or drinking in the pub. It is frustrating and occasional experiments with longer hours work in the short term but often drop off. Changing it at the moment would be tough, not just because of the need to pay staff for time when there may not be any trade due to longterm cultural issues but also because it is bloody difficult to recruit staff at the moment.
I occasionally meet one of my mates for an evening coffee at the Tim
Horton’s that is roughly equidistant between us. It’s open until midnight every night but Sunday.
There are also a couple of late opening coffee shops in the city centre and a 24hr Starbucks if I could be bothered to drive for twenty minutes.
It may only be some bigger cities (and sometimes just big chains), but late opening coffee shops do exist.
People want to go home and not work all day ?
Tell you what’s a real pisser though – going out for a walk in the country, being all set for a tea and a slab of V Sponge when you’re done at 4.10pm, and finding all the cafes closed right up.
Board game cafes actually fill this hole so well. Often open till late, you can have alcohol if you wish, equally you can have a cup of tea and some red velvet cake. And all the ones I’ve been in, you only pay a table fee if you’re playing games.
It’s because the majority cater to morning commuters and truckers, at least in my areas. So they tend to open around 6am and close around 2pm. The ones in towns and city centres tend to open a bit later (8/9) and close later 4/5 to match the shops but they don’t tend to stay open later than that because by 5/6pm people are coming out of work and people would rather go to the pub than a cafe.
Sucks for those who don’t drink or don’t enjoy pub culture but there’s no demand for late evening cafes.
In a nutshell, when the weather is good people want to be out boozing, when the weather is bad people don’t want to be out in the cold and dark and wet unless there’s alcohol involved. So in the evenings, as a nation we’re either down the pub or cosying up at home.
I do think in larger cities you’ll see cafes open later, and I imagine that’s because of high populations of students and young professionals who are likely to be in shared houses and therefore might appreciate getting out of the house to work/study.
Insufficient demand for the proprietors to deem it worth their while.
Because if they didn’t, then we wouldn’t get a million posts on the sub asking this question over and over again.
Most cafés exist because of tradespeople. So open early 6am/7am and close at 3pm which is a pretty usual time to for tradespeople to finish for the day.
No demand. People have tried many times, it doesnt work.
Only exception is the middle eastern cafes / shisha bars aimed at cultures that don’t drink.
I disagree with you anyway, I’ve been all over Europe and cafes as in coffee and cake ones shut by 6 at the latest. All the ones open later are bars, where you can have a coffee or a beer.
I think this is changing, there does seem to be more demand for cafe type environments to meet in than just pubs, or sometimes it’s pubs that are starting to resemble cafés
There are a lot of people who don’t drink or drink very little, including myself, I like pubs but would be good to have more options too
Also worth remembering that culture does change and is not fixed in stone, UK was once full of coffee houses in the 17th and 18h centuries which were open very late hours
Everyone here saying how the UK has a pub culture and not a cafe culture; missing out that besides pubs and clubs, there’s really not much else to do in the evenings.
Nothing’s open. It’s not just pub vs cafe. There might be ice cream/dessert shops that will be open late but generally, nothing to do in the evenings.