There was a study that came out recently about the “aesthetic homogenization” of independent coffee shops. It was published recently in the semi-scholarly journal City, Culture, and Society. We say “semi-scholarly” because in our opinion the study is terrible.
I’ll save you the trouble of reading it, though you can here or in summary form via The Conversation here. In short: independent coffee shops, by which they mean third-wave/specialty cafes, tout themselves as the antithesis of the monolithic chains, like Starbucks, but somehow they all look alike. This claim is bolstered by a survey of customers asked to picture a specific specialty cafe and then select some of the design elements in it.
The most common response, I shit you not, was “Baristas or staff with tattoos or piercings,” at 66%. Never mind the fact that people aren’t design elements, but truly I am shocked to learn the baristas, predominantly younger and thus more accepting of tattoos and piercings than older generations, have tattoos and piercings. Really revelatory stuff here. Imagine dedicating your entire life to studying such an earth-shaking and epochal data set.
Other astonishing revelations in this study include chalkboard signage, reclaimed wood furniture, local art, latte art, plants (?!), and exposed brick.
It’s all bad research based on flawed premises to support, I’m guessing, a predetermined conclusion. But it does bring to light an interesting, design-adjacent question in the specialty coffee world. And that is: here in 2026, what are some cues that a shop is going to be quality?
Specialty acolytes have used them for pretty much the entire 21st century to determine if a cafe shared their fervency for coffee. But the cues have evolved as the industry has. The espresso machine used to be a pretty easy tell. If you saw a Linea, you knew things were looking up. Then it became filter coffee preparation, ie pour-over. Alternative milk options, specialty drinks, etc. Minimalism, clean white color palates, open spaces, they all signaled specialty at some point, before being mega-conglomo-co-opted into a wider design aesthetic with global tendencies (around here we call these cafes Sprudge-lookin’).
So what is the tell here in the year 2026? Or is it a combination of things? The choice of espresso machine is always a good start, but maybe it’s a thoughtful selection of roasters or a nicely designed bag of coffee. Or a tea menu, which is difficult to pull off in a caring way and usually portends a great deal of care for the other beverages being served.
But that’s why we are putting it to you, the Sprudge reader, the person is inclined to think more deeply about coffee than the average consumer: what do you look for? What are the signs that a shop you are visiting for the first time is going to be good for you to order your real drink order and not the one you fall back on when things are looking dire? (We all have these right?)
We asking you to sound off on what engenders hope of really good coffee when visiting a cafe. Shoot us a DM on Insta, email us, give us a call and leave a cheeky little voice message at 1-888-55-SPRUDGE. Surely we can collectively crowdsource better answers than tattoos and beards, scholarly journal be damned.
Zac Cadwalader is the managing editor at Sprudge Media Network and a staff writer based in Dallas. Read more Zac Cadwalader on Sprudge.
