Get your caffeine fix at a music-fueled coffee rave
On a visit to London last year, Mithilesh Vazalwar, founder of Nagpur-based Corridor Seven Coffee Roasters, found himself at a uniquely interesting coffee space. A DJ was belting out energetic numbers while a crowd danced around him, exactly as anyone would at a rave party—except everyone was sober.
Vazalwar had thought about holding 'jamming sessions" at his Nagpur café since 2018 but the London scene refined his idea. 'Coffee raves are popular in Europe and US. I wanted to bring it to India. I connected with a local DJ and we sent out promotional material expecting 250 people to show up, max. Imagine our surprise when close to 500 came in during our first coffee rave in December last year," he says.
Ace DJ and TV host Nikhil Chinapa played a set at the café soon after, drawing a bigger crowd. The news spread like wildfire on social media and coffee raves have since proliferated across metro cities and Tier 2 and 3 cities such as Rajkot, Udaipur, Guwahati, Lucknow and Dehradun.
Bengaluru-based Harihar Thakral, better known as DJ Stich, says a coffee rave allows students who can't legally drink to enjoy a dance party and puts parents at ease since they know the gig will be done by 10pm. 'Coffee raves have been happening in New York and Amsterdam for a while. In Germany, in fact, these raves are celebrated the same way we celebrate festivals like Holi," he says.
Dehradun-based Bharat Bhardwaj, known as Bakflash who has been DJing for the past 12 years, says he was surprised to see some of his boxing buddies at a recent coffee rave in the city.
From sober living to a new way of socialising and even partying with your parents, the coffee rave phenomenon can be looked at from different angles, but one thing everyone agrees on is that it's one of the best ways to build a following and a community for the café as well as the musician behind the rave.
'Cafés are known as the third place people live in (after homes and offices) so it's natural to have something like a coffee rave experience that brings together like-minded music lovers at one spot to chill and enjoy," says Yahvi Mariwala, executive director of Nandan Coffee in Mumbai.
The brand's flagship café in Mumbai's Fort area hosted a coffee rave in November last year and will host another next month. 'We had opened the event to a guest list of 100 people. It was fully booked in two days. A lot of people from the neighbourhood also walked in during the event," says Mariwala.
Globally the phenomenon has taken off with DJ tours and exclusive gigs focused on the coffee experience, but India is still finding the right balance between drinking coffee and partying. In India, coffee raves are not yet lucrative for either party. Cafés miss out on sales volumes, which aren't proportionate to the overflowing crowds during a rave. DJs, too, often play for free or a for small fee, making it an unsustainable option in the long run.Even so, both parties are gung-ho about the new sub-culture of coffee raves.
Nagpur-based Tanishq Gaikwad, known as Tanishq Audio, is the first DJ to complete a nine-city coffee rave tour in the country, with gigs in Lucknow, Delhi, Bengaluru, Mumbai, Indore and other cities earlier this year. Gaikwad played at Corridor Seven in Nagpur and says he woke up to two million views for the gig on his Instagram profile. This was followed by a partnership with District by Zomato and Insider to conduct a multi-city tour that has left him exhausted.
'The way coffee raves have picked up on social media is incredible. It was something we wanted to do and it felt great to see parents dance with their four and five-year-olds at coffee raves. It also helps with building your fanbase. But you usually get a quarter of what you are paid in clubs for a similar gig so it's not sustainable right now," Gaikwad says.
For café owners, the main idea is to bring in a new demographic of music lovers to their cafés and have something new for regulars. Mitali Mandeep Bajaj, who runs Café de Meet in Surat, says people in the city are bored of attending house parties with the same playlist and have embraced techno gigs in the café on Sunday mornings, an indication of how much they crave new experiences. 'We see our space transform through the day from students in the morning to youngsters in the evening and families at night. The one thing that brings them all together is music," says Bajaj.
Mariwala says people are looking for experiences beyond clubbing where you just sit, eat and drink. 'They're not consciously avoiding alcoholic experiences, rather they're looking for more sober experiences. That's why even run clubs have also become so popular."
DJs, on the other hand, enjoy performing at coffee raves despite the low fees because it gives them a chance to experiment and play their kind of music, something they cannot take a chance with at clubs. Gaikwad says DJs need to read the room and play music accordingly at clubs, but at coffee raves, he skips Bollywood altogether and plays more Afro and house music.
Thakral says the audience in clubs doesn't care about music. 'The club crowd just wants to rage. It's more about the alcohol and less about the sound. No one is there for the love of music. The coffee rave crowd has taste. I can play classical soft rock or 90s house music and they will enjoy it."
Coffee raves are also attracting event promoters to go all in on the concept. Ananya Rana, who runs the Coffee Rave India Instagram page and hosted the Dehradun coffee rave, is planning to hit Chandigarh and Delhi next as part of a nationwide coffee rave IP. 'We are planning to take coffee raves across the country along with a pan India brand," Rana says.
With even cafés and DJs showing no signs of giving up, you can bet a coffee rave will be organised at your favourite coffee shop soon.
Priyanko Sarkar is a Mumbai-based writer covering the F&B industry.
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