COFFEE SHOPS IN A POST-PANDEMIC DUNDEE

Recently I’ve been hearing of the idea of ‘third places’ and to be honest I wasn’t aware of how much people needed them, especially in the wake of a global pandemic. So, I started talking to people at work and realised that my job has little to do with making coffee.

I started working at EH9 espresso just before it opened, last summer. Having moved to Dundee in January 2021 –when the latest lockdown had dropped– this changed the dynamic of how I experienced a new city. And when the restaurant, bars and social spaces opened up again, I felt like I had forgotten how to socialise like a normal human being.

Standing behind the counter allowed me to be an observer and learn a little bit about this city and its people. Every day I get a glimpse into people’s lives. There are families or groups of dads that come or a coffee before their Sunday stroll down to Magdalene Green. Some students share their stresses and successes with my colleagues and me. There are people who every day have hundreds of stories to tell, and it seems like they are living multiple lives. There are artists, yoga teachers, doctors, and dentists (who are also artists). I get to talk with skater girls and stylish boys and see first daters become couples. People who pay a coffee forward just to make someone else’s day a little better.

This mix of people and their stories has allowed me to feel embraced and welcomed into this new life that I have in Dundee. Chloe is a student at Robert Gordon University in Aberdeen. She started coming to the café just a few months after it opened; since then, she has become an integral part of my day. She comes in, orders her oat chai latte, has a quick chat with the team to update us on the progress of her work. Then, she sits down and produces the most beautiful things.

Occasionally, I love to hang out at EH9 even when I’m off work and sometimes I share a table with Chloe, and I get to distract her from her work for a little while. I asked her what makes her come back to the café time and time again. She said: “I grew up here and this place doesn’t have that typical Dundee vibe, where you are weird if you’re doing something creative; there is no judgment. People can be openly working on whatever they are working on. Like my friends that come here to draw. And there is no judgment from anybody else sitting around”.

We also talked about the impact that online learning has had on students in the past two years:

“That’s why I come in here and I don’t sit at home like a little lonely girl. None of my Uni friends live here; they all live in Aberdeen, and all my friends from home go to Uni. So, it’s just me trying to crack on. If I was at home or just somewhere where I couldn’t chat with you guys, I probably would start to be lonely and isolated. The nature of this work it’s quite insular. But at least I can sit in here and I don’t have to put my headphones on, and I can start chatting to people and it’s a lot less lonely”

Chatting to Chloe got me thinking about how people have coped with the isolation during the pandemic and what role cafes and social spaces play in their lives as we slowly go back to “normality”.

Maybe just because it has been, and it still is an experience that we all share, we might collectively forget or look past the individual experiences that the pandemic has put us all through.

Gordon has been a consistent presence since the café opened. We got to know him one long black at a time, and as time went by, he told us his story. Gordon suffered from a heart attack in May 2021 and recalls this as a traumatic time in his life. Since then, he has slowly begun to recover. He told us he would take long walks up and down Perth Road when one day he stumbled upon EH9 and thought “that’s a change!”.

He then started using the café as a regular stop during his walks “…and it almost became not a safe space, people talk a lot about safe spaces these days, for me, it wasn’t a safe space, it was someplace to go to just relax and watch other people’s lives go by, particularly as mine had flashed before my eyes so quickly.”

After a while, Gordon became quite the advocate for EH9 and started inviting friends for a catch-up over coffee. “It tends to be other guys because guys are not good at socialising and meeting up especially in my generation. Especially working from home, you spend too much time with your own thoughts and that’s not a good place to be for your mental health. Most people are going through something, particularly now, and it has highlighted the importance of physically being with people.”

The everyday chats with Gordon and Chloe made me think of the ripple effect that a cup of coffee can have. Because mostly cafes or third spaces don’t operate by themselves, they quite often rely on other local businesses, and they rely on people getting together.

Since the opening of EH9, I got to meet Mishal and learn of her love for baking. She once brought in some of her cookies for us to try. She says, “it was just to do a good deed. I thought, ‘I am a small business I’m going to give you something’. That wasn’t even me thinking about closing a deal, it was just me creating a relationship with another local business”.

After a few months of her coming to the café for meetings or to get a coffee with a friend, Mishel and her Curations became the supplier of the famous brownies. Her bakes often don’t even make it to the counter as they sell out thanks to the community around the café that genuinely wants to support Mishal and her business.

Mishal started Curations in July 2021 and has grown increasingly popular since then. She describes herself as a “do or die” kind of person and by interacting with her you can tell how passionate she is about her work.

If it’s hard to be a small business owner, being a small business owner during a pandemic can be extra challenging. Mishel recalls the first months of being an entrepreneur and what has helped her carryon day by day.

“It’s the spiderweb of human connections. It’s the most meaningful thing that gives me fulfilment and energy to go forward. There have been days in which I’ve cried because of the workload or because I haven’t had a day off in weeks. But then I get these random messages from people trying my products in EH9, Spoiled Life or Dook, praising my work and saying that they can’t wait to go back and try all the different flavours. This heals me instantly.”

The interconnectivity between people, third spaces and small independent businesses is what has helped reconstruct the foundations of Dundee’s communities. And as much as we can rely on technology to help us connect, being present in spaces that have been created for human interactions can’t be so easily replaced by Zoom dates.