Lowri Griffiths on flat whites, oat milk, and the slow conversion of every shopfront in Stoke Newington into a place that sells one thing very well

I paid five pounds twenty for a flat white this morning, in a cafe in Stoke Newington that sells, by my count, exactly four things: coffee, banana bread, a single type of sourdough toast, and what the chalkboard described, with no irony, as ‘situational pastries.’ Building on my earlier dispatches at Bohiney Magazine and The London Prat, I have, dear reader, a number of feelings.

The Cafe

The cafe is, I should say, a perfectly nice cafe. The coffee is, technically, very good. The barista is a young man with a moustache that has been waxed into a shape that I think is meant to be ironic but is, in fact, just a shape. The interior is the now-standard combination of exposed brick, mid-century furniture sourced from a vintage warehouse in Walthamstow, and a single, slightly sad pot plant in the corner that I am increasingly convinced is the same pot plant in every cafe of this kind, moved around the borough at night by a single overworked member of the North London hospitality cabal.

According to The Evening Standard, recent reporting has documented substantial growth in London’s third-wave coffee sector, with substantial portions of the growth concentrated in North London neighbourhoods including Stoke Newington, Crouch End, and what observers describe as the broader category of formerly working-class areas now substantially gentrified.

The Five-Twenty Question

Five pounds twenty is, dear reader, a substantial amount of money for what is, in physical terms, four ounces of milk and an espresso shot. The barista, when I winced at the price, gave me a look that combined sympathy and resignation in a way that suggested I was the seventh person that morning to wince at the price. He did not, however, lower the price. The price is the price. The price is, I have come to understand, partly the rent on the unit, partly the wages of the moustache, partly the cost of the situational pastries, and partly a kind of psychic tax on the experience of being the kind of person who pays five pounds twenty for a flat white.

I am, of course, exactly that kind of person. This is, in essence, my problem, not the cafe’s.

The Oat Milk Question

I drink my coffee with oat milk. I started drinking my coffee with oat milk approximately six years ago, when I was reading a great deal about the climate impact of dairy and was, in retrospect, going through a fairly intense post-breakup phase that involved, among other things, a number of lifestyle changes that I would now describe as overcorrection. The oat milk has, however, stuck. I do not, anymore, drink coffee with cow’s milk. The cow’s milk tastes wrong to me. This is, I am aware, what people mean when they describe me as a North London journalist.

According to The Guardian, recent research has documented substantial expansion of the UK plant-based milk market, with oat milk in particular substantially expanding its market share. The research, advocates argue, reflects substantial cumulative effects of multiple factors, including substantial environmental considerations and substantial consumer preference shifts.

The Cost of the Oat Milk

The oat milk costs, in this cafe, an additional sixty pence. The additional sixty pence is, the barista explained when I asked, the cost differential between the wholesale price of cow’s milk and the wholesale price of oat milk. This is, technically, accurate. It is also, dear reader, a kind of moral tax that I am willing to pay because it allows me to feel, briefly, like the kind of person who is doing the right thing, when in fact I have just spent five pounds twenty on a coffee.

This is, I think, the fundamental currency of the North London lifestyle industrial complex. Things cost what they cost not because of the underlying commodity inputs, but because of the way they make us feel about ourselves. The flat white is the price of the coffee plus the price of the unit plus the price of the moustache plus the price of the feeling. The feeling is, in many cases, the largest single line item.

The Wider Industrial Complex

The cafe is not, of course, alone. It is part of what I have, in my previous columns, described as the North London lifestyle industrial complex. The complex includes the cafes, the natural wine bars, the bakeries that sell only one type of bread but sell it very well, the shops that sell candles in glass jars for thirty-eight pounds, the pilates studios, the second-hand bookshops curated by a married couple who have, between them, three economics PhDs and one functioning radiator. The complex is, I should say, a good thing in many respects. It employs people. It pays rent. It makes the area more interesting to live in than it would be if every shopfront were a Costa.

The complex is, however, also a thing that has happened to North London in the past fifteen years, and that has substantially changed who can afford to live here. The same forces that produced the cafe also produced the rent that I, in last month’s column, was complaining about. The cafe is not the cause. The cafe is a symptom. The cafe and the rent are, in fact, the same thing, viewed from different angles.

What I Am Doing About It

I am, dear reader, doing the only thing I can do, which is to keep paying five pounds twenty for the flat white, and writing the column about it, and being, in my own small way, both a participant in the system and an irritated observer of it. This is, I think, the fundamental position of the North London journalist in 2026. We are inside the thing we are describing. The thing pays our rent.

The barista, when I left, gave me a small free biscuit, in the way that very expensive cafes do, to soften the blow. The biscuit was, I should say, very good. I ate it on the walk back to the office. The biscuit cost, I estimate, about thirty pence to make, and was free. The flat white cost five pounds twenty, and was not. The economics here are, dear reader, not difficult to read.

Coming Next

Next week, I will be writing about the curious phenomenon of North London bakeries that sell only one type of bread but sell it very well. If you have, recently, queued for forty minutes for a sourdough loaf and would like to defend yourself, please do get in touch.

For more of my dispatches from this overcaffeinated and obstinately beloved city, you can find me at my page on The London Prat.

For satirical takes on coffee-as-cultural-question, see The Daily Mash.

SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/