Oh no: is the brown café disappearing?
The brown café is not doing well, and personally I find that very sad news. Because brown cafés are precisely the coziest, friendliest and most atmospheric places to enjoy a drink. If it were up to me, that is — apparently, more and more people are choosing the ‘hipper’ places, forcing an increasing number of brown cafés to close their doors.
And there are already quite a few: according to AD, one in five brown cafés has disappeared over the past fifteen years. I find that a shockingly high number.
‘A coffee rather than a hangover’
That is reported by NOS, which spoke to Koninklijk Horeca Nederland about the disappearance of brown cafés. Apparently, people would now rather go to trendy coffee shops than drink small beers in an old-fashioned, wonderfully cozy brown café. They do not keep track of exactly how many there are left, by the way, but they do track how many brown cafés do not serve food: that number has fallen by 30 percent in ten years — as of 2023, there are still around 5,000 cafés of this kind.
Now, I have to admit that I prefer a brown café where you can eat too, because in my experience the food is often genuinely very good. I grew up in Ouderkerk aan de Amstel, where you have the brown café De Vrije Handel, and seriously, that food is really very good. But I have also been made very happy by the meatball at Café Hans in Amsterdam: if you live in our capital, you really have to try it sometime. You will not regret it.
So, to counter this ‘trend’ for a moment, I have a question for you: what is your favorite brown café? Give them a shout-out in the Facebook comments, because apparently brown cafés need all the promotion they can get. You now know my favorites.
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Image: Café de Vrije Handel
