The full craft experience – “just” coffee isn’t cutting it anymore
Sarah Charles
December 30, 2025
artisan coffee
Specialty coffee shops are adding bakeries, florists, and craft retail to lift spend and loyalty
During the pandemic, shoppers reported support for small farms rising nearly 1.5× more than any other value, and that preference has endured
Artisan bakery sales outpaced standard bread in 2023–24, showing demand for slower, skill-heavy production over convenience
FOR much of the past decade, specialty coffee’s promise was simple: better coffee, better brewing, and better ethics. A flat white made with traceable origins and a calibrated grinder was enough to signal taste and virtue– but that is no longer the case.
Across affluent cities, coffee shops are gradually mutating into something broader. They are cafés and sourdough bakeries, cafés and cycling hubs, cafés and greengrocers stacked with heirloom tomatoes. Brunswick East in London, for example, is a specialty coffee shop, a bakehouse, and an urban farm – all rolled into one. In Greece, Botaniq Brew just opened its “coffee flower shop,” and Stonykill Coffee & Records in New York serve specialty brews alongside records, tapes, and books.
Coffee anchors these new artisanal hubs, but their competitive edge now lies in what extra concept they offer.
“You’ll have to have an identity to stand out these days,” says Jason Waits from Craft Kafe in St. Petersburg, Florida. “Simply being a pedestrian cafe won’t work long term unless you have a unique atmosphere that doesn’t fade easily with a current trend. Quality in-house baking and food is a huge draw. Up-to-date retail is a must and easy to maintain as it doesn’t expire and stores easily. If you’re in an area with a lot of tourism – you’ll need to have the city of your business on all your retail to drive sales.”
The shift is partly economic. In many mature markets, specialty coffee has become mainstream. Barista skills have diffused, equipment has commoditised and margins have tightened. If every neighbourhood can produce a competent cappuccino, differentiation must come from elsewhere. Pastries, floristry, retail and craft goods raise average spend, lengthen dwell time and turn a transactional visit into an experience.
“The addition of in-house pizza and freshly baked goods has had a significant impact on average ticket size and customer behaviour,” says Chris Kavrakos, Co-owner of TheRoosters.co & Mindthecup.
“We observe that when coffee is paired with quality food, the average bill increases noticeably, as a large share of customers choose a snack or a full meal alongside their coffee. At the same time, dwell time in the store increases – coffee on its own is a quick stop, but a plate of pizza or a freshly baked croissant extends the experience and strengthens the social nature of the space.”
But the change also reflects something more cultural. Covid accelerated a turn towards the tangible. Lockdowns forced consumers to confront the limits of the digital: endless screens, abstract labour and frictionless consumption that felt curiously empty. When cafés reopened, they understood the importance of presence and connection even more.
Farmers’ markets offer another clue. Attendance across Europe and North America has remained high well after pandemic restrictions lifted. 2023 survey data from Michigan shows how sharply consumer priorities shifted during the pandemic, reporting the desire to support small farms rising nearly 1.5 times more often than any other factor. Health, safety, freshness, local sourcing and supply security followed closely, reflecting how concerns over fragile global food systems and personal wellbeing pushed shoppers toward local markets as safer, more meaningful ways to buy food while supporting nearby producers.
The appeal is not price or convenience. It’s proximity – to producers, seasonality, and something recognisably real. Coffee shops that sell sourdough baked on site, flowers cut that morning or ceramics thrown by local artists are borrowing directly from that logic.
The aesthetic has followed suit. Bags of flour on the floor, sacks of green coffee by the roaster, and crates of tomatoes stacked by the door have become commonplace sightings. These visual cues matter. They signal authenticity through productive mess. Where clean minimalism once suggested quality, now it can suggest emptiness.
Craft as counterweight to efficiency
This revival of craft sits awkwardly alongside another dominant force: automation. Food and drink retail is becoming faster, more digital and more optimised. Self-ordering kiosks, mobile payments and algorithmic supply chains promise efficiency and scale. From a balance-sheet perspective, they make sense.
From a human one, they leave gaps that craft brands can repair by focusing on meaningful exchanges and attention to detail.
“You need just one or two craft coffee beverages to speak to those looking for something adventurous,” says Jason. “You don’t need a complicated coffee menu.”
“Training your staff when taking orders to talk to customers is also something we tend to forget. Quick, affable, confident, and having the customer leave feeling they made the right choice is huge and often overlooked. Having an open space where you can talk and engage with your customers is also big as you can focus on your craft of making coffee and spend time talking, which makes everything feel like it’s moving quickly.”
Craft fills the gaps left by convenience by reintroducing friction – often deliberately. Waiting for sourdough to ferment, browsing flowers without a shopping list, flipping through vinyl records: these activities slow consumption and restore a sense of agency. They are inefficient by design.
A standard croissant with its expertly laminated pastry will take around 3-4 days to create, with carefully regulated temperatures. Eric’s in South London can only open two days a week, because the owner has to prep the pastry and ingredients the other days of the week.
That inefficiency is the point. Craft provides texture in a world of smooth surfaces. It offers skills that cannot be instantly replicated or downloaded. Watching a baker laminate dough or a florist assemble a bouquet reconnects the consumer to labour and time – two things the digital economy tends to erase.
Mintel data shows that artisan and in-store bakery bread is gaining ground on mass-market loaves: in January 2024, unit sales of perimeter (fresh) bakery bread jumped 7.9% year on year, while centre-store packaged breads declined – a sign that shoppers are increasingly choosing slower, craft-led bakery options over industrial alternatives.
“In our business, we preserve slow, handcrafted processes in everything that directly affects flavour and the customer experience, because that’s where we gain quality, differentiation and loyalty,” says Chris.
“When customers can feel the difference – in a properly extracted coffee, a handmade bun or a fresh sauce – they’re more willing to return and to pay more for it. In short, the handcrafted element is not a cost; it’s value. It gives character, a distinct identity, and ensures our product doesn’t look like everything else on the market. We keep it because it elevates quality and experience, builds the brand, and makes customers want to come back.”
The trend is not universal. It flourishes mostly in affluent places, where basic needs are met and consumers can afford to prize meaning over status. In less wealthy contexts, the logic reverses. Newness, polish and visible investment matter more. Shiny cafés, global brands and conspicuous consumption signal progress, not alienation. Craft, with its rough edges, imperfect results and slow processes can read as regression rather than authenticity.
The “full craft experience” is geographically selective. It thrives in gentrified neighbourhoods where consumers are saturated with choice and sceptical of scale. It struggles where aspiration is still closely tied to modernity.
Even in rich cities, it remains a niche rather than a mass movement. Convenience still dominates most consumption. But craft has become culturally influential far beyond its market share, shaping what feels desirable and credible.
bike and coffee shop
Gen Z, paradox, and the future of cafés
Generational dynamics complicate the picture. Gen Z is often cast as digitally native, convenience-driven and impatient. That is only half true.
Younger consumers want speed and slowness, automation and authenticity. They order groceries online but queue for croissants. They live on social media yet fetishise analogue experiences. They are less interested in labels – café, bakery, shop – than in atmospheres and values. The digital-to-physical experience is paramount.
For them, hybridity is not a contradiction but a baseline. A café that sells coffee, clothes and ceramics makes sense because it mirrors how identity works online: layered, fluid, non-exclusive. Contradiction is acceptable if it feels intentional. Waiting is fine if it comes with meaning.
This creates challenges for operators. Craft is expensive, hard to scale and dependent on skilled labour. It resists standardisation, which makes investors nervous. Yet purely digital, optimised models struggle to build loyalty or emotional attachment, especially among younger consumers who are acutely attuned to inauthenticity.
“Coffee, pastry, food has always been very visual, and you’ll have to keep up with that,” says Jason. “There’s also a real internet and phone addiction you can always lean into, but in my opinion, social media and AI will change – and not the way most see it.”
“I truly believe that once AI gets so annoying you can’t tell what’s real, people will crave real experiences – and those who stick to quality and a warm and welcoming atmosphere will always reap those benefits. That just means you should focus on quality and a good cafe experience, and they’ll keep coming back.”
The likely outcome is not a triumph of one model over the other, but an uneasy coexistence. Automation will handle the invisible infrastructure – payments, inventory, logistics – while craft will potentially occupy the visible layer, where identity is formed and value perceived.
It seems that coffee shops will continue to multiply roles: part workshop, part gallery, part community space. “Just” coffee is no longer enough, and meaning and experience have become prime hooks.
Coffee Intelligence