Concept Cafés: Part 1

When I'm rich and eccentric,

I'm gonna start several concept café chains across the nation. I won't care if they don't make any money, and they'll be too hip and edgy to stay out of the news, thus solidifying my reputation as a rich eccentric.

Café the first:

Sac

First, an honorable mention to my friend Aaron, who came up with the concept itself. I know it's kind of cheating to post this online when it's his intellectual property, but I retell this idea so often that I think it's high time more people saw it. I've also embellished the concept significantly.

Picture it: you walk in to the bar. It's halfway between steampunk and distressed-industrial chic, with dark hardwood floors, brass-and-leather booths, and mahogany everywhere. Everywhere. On the ceiling, copper tracks crisscross over the tables, passing through windows high in the walls to disappear into the kitchen.

You sit down at the bar, a table, or a booth with your friends and order drinks. But your expected portioning of "pitcher", "bottle", and "glass" is nonexistent. The waiter takes your order with a quill on handmade paper, using a pounded brass sheet as a writing surface. He walks away.

After a few minutes, he arrives with a platter. Instead of the glasses you're expecting, atop the tray lie several leather-and-wood goblets in the rough shape of egg holders. These goblets bear small leather bladders, stitched together with catgut. He passes these out and hands each of you a straw that's like yerba mate meets capri-sun, all ornamented up. How to get at your drink? Stab that bladder with the straw and drain your drink!

Edgy. Vintage. Sac.

Let's say you order something larger than a single drink--something like a bottle of wine. A couple minutes after ordering, you notice a dark shape looming at you from the ceiling. As it comes closer, you see your waiter acting the railroad conductor, pulling a giant hanging leather balloon of beverage along the tracks in the ceiling. It'll be suspended from twine like one of those old-school hot air balloons, but upside down. You receive several hookah-style hoses with sharp ends and little nozzles right by the mouthpiece. Stab the bottom and turn the nozzle and you're all enjoying some '64 Syrah. So there you are, sipping on hookah-beer from a giant looming leather hot-air balloon hanging over your table.

Classy. Awesome. Sac.


Some advantages of bladders: easy cleanup, lowered possibility of spillage, and no open-container laws to worry about. Plus, passing a drink down the bar would be badass on tracks.

I myself would have a table set up on a balcony with a motorized section of track to send drinks up. I'd have premium leather on my drinks, printed with some cool designs or something--not that I'd need to do anything else to be more eccentric. I think leather-bound drinks on ceiling tracks is pretty out there.

Look for Sac in your city soon.