In an unusual turn of events, France’s proud café culture seems to be taking lessons from South Korea. Witness the opening of a “letter café” at the heart of Paris’s buzzing 11th arrondissement.
The concept of a “letter café” was originally dreamt up in Seoul, at the Nuldam Space, where clients have the chance to buy a coffee and be given the stationery and time necessary to write their future selves a letter or postcard.
Write a letter in the city of Balzac and Baudelaire
It seems a perfect match for France’s City of Lights, where cafés have been meeting places for the literati for centuries. And now café-goers are being invited to channel their inner flaneur or poet at Café Pli (The Fold Café) at 38 rue du Faubourg du Temple, a street immortalised by novelist Balzac and now a buzzing semi-pedestrianised hub.
Whether they are feeling as feisty as the protesters who regularly begin or end their marches in nearby Place de la République, or as melancholic as Baudelaire, clients can pour their feelings or best advice into a letter to themselves (or someone else) for future food for thought.
How does it work?
For anyone stuck for ideas, the café has plenty of suggestions about how and why we might want to write to ourselves or others. They range from goal-setting or taking stock of life, to relaxing, marking a special occasion, giving someone a surprise that has taken more time and effort than an SMS message, and even supporting the artisanal crafting trade.
Over a beverage and a pâtisserie, with a selection of stationery, pens, and even coloured wax seals on hand, the cafés writers create their missives and mark them for sending at a future date of their choice. The price for the service depends on how far in the future the letter is to be sent, with more distant send-dates incurring a higher outlay, but the option is there to delay postage for up to 20 years if required – and even to send the letters abroad. It’s also possible to gift a Café Pli experience to someone else.
No reservations needed
Tapping in to trends for slower experiences and ways to be mindful and connect with others without being dependent on our digital devices, the Café Pli’s website insists it is “first and foremost a coffee house, open without reservations”. Unlike most coffee houses though, its delicious aromas of roasted beans are enhanced by the unbeatable smell of fresh ink on paper. And it just happens to have a photobooth too, in case you decide to slip a photographic memento inside your envelope.
