When was the first McCafe opened and where, and how does the Nescafé pop-up compare?

Nescafé opened a pop-up on Queen Street West in Toronto where nothing is sold. There is no menu, no barista and no coffee for purchase: guests must bring their own Nescafé instant coffee and swipe it as a door card. Inside, the shop offers hot water, takeaway cups, sofas and free Wi-Fi. It runs daily from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. until June 28.

Nescafé Canada's senior marketing manager framed the space as a place to gather over a homemade, affordable cup rather than a retail counter, and the cups carry deliberately misspelled names that poke fun at another coffee chain. A separate site for Sweet & Creamy instant coffee invites consumers to vote on the next city, which suggests the pop-up is brand marketing rather than a move into café retail.

Nescafé recently opened a pop-up store on Queen Street West in Toronto, Canada, but it is completely different from a regular café—there is no menu, no baristas, and not even any coffee drinks for sale. Customers must bring their own Nescafé instant coffee to swipe as a "door access card" to enter, and the shop only provides hot water, takeaway cups, comfortable sofas, and free Wi-Fi. This pop-up store, open until June 28, feels more like a carefully planned brand marketing campaign. A senior marketing manager for Nescafé Canada said that although brewing instant coffee at home is simple, people sometimes also long to gather with friends in a café atmosphere. Notably, the cups provided in the store have intentionally misspelled names printed on them, seemingly poking fun at a certain coffee chain brand. Nescafé also built a separate website for its Sweet & Creamy instant coffee and invited consumers to vote on which city the next stop should be. Front Street Coffee believes that this kind of marketing is intended to strengthen the presence of instant products, but the flavor performance of instant coffee itself is still open to question.

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Nescafé recently opened a coffee shop in Toronto, Canada. Everyone has long been familiar with Nescafé coffee, but Nescafé personally opening a store to sell Nescafé coffee sounds quite logical.

There is nothing wrong with Nescafé selling instant products themselves; after all, there are always consumers willing to pay. But what is the reason for opening a physical coffee shop? What is even more surprising is that to enter the store, you have to bring your own instant coffee, and you cannot find a single barista in the shop.

Without further ado, let's take a look first.

This Nescafé pop-up store is located at 499 Queen Street West in Toronto, open daily from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m., and the event lasts until June 28.

A senior marketing manager for Nescafé Canada pointed out that brewing a cup of Sweet & Creamy instant coffee at home is an easy thing to do, but sometimes people want to gather with friends in a café. If such a place could be provided, letting everyone have a homemade and affordable cup of Nescafé coffee, it would be a good choice.

In short—

To enter this store, you need to swipe a card to open the door, and the access card is a strip of Nescafé instant coffee that you bring yourself.

Nescafé made it clear that this pop-up café is equipped with comfortable sofas, free Wi-Fi, power outlets, and stylishly designed light bulbs, but there is no menu, no baristas, and not even coffee for sale.

As expected, it is willful indeed; a coffee shop where you even have to bring your own coffee is truly something seen for the first time.

Of course, the store still provides hot water and takeaway cups, and the cups even solemnly have the guests' names written on them. However, since there is not even a barista in the store, the names on the cups are obviously not handwritten, and there are only 50 choices.

Perhaps to deliberately poke fun at a certain coffee chain brand, Nescafé also specially misspelled the names. For example, Olivia was written as Olivea, Thomas was written as Tomoss, Lisa was written as Leesaw...

It is understandable that some people can line up for two or three hours just to drink a beverage, so naturally there are also people who go to a café just to work in a different environment or chat with friends. It is precisely the hearts of the latter that Nescafé wants to capture. Purely from the perspective of a coffee shop, this is naturally not a money-making business. Nescafé's pop-up coffee shop in Toronto is clearly a marketing campaign packaged in a very likable way.

They specially built a separate website for Sweet & Creamy instant coffee. In the online store, besides the new 18-stick coffee pack priced at less than $8, they also sell the misspelled coffee cups mentioned in the advertisement.

In addition to this first self-service café tried in Toronto, Nescafé is also inviting people on its official website to tell them which city they hope this coffee shop will open in. And it is certain that, in order to strengthen the influence of its ace product instant coffee, there will be more and more marketing tricks in the future.

But the editor says, no matter how many tricks Nescafé has, I still will not drink instant coffee anyway～

The above content is compiled by CoffeeHunters, a coffee news website.