How to choose a cafe

Restaurant or Cafe: How to Choose Between the Two

There are some basic differences between a restaurant and cafe. Here is how you decide between a restaurant or cafe.

Restaurant or Cafe: How to Choose Between the Two

If you are like me, you have no idea if you want to dine in a restaurant or cafe. With the growing trend of people dining in different establishments instead of eating the traditional home-cooked dishes, there is an eruption of restaurants and cafes.

If you travel hack, you’ll need to know the how to choose from both a restaurant and a cafe before you go exploring. Definitely as it relates to the particular city.

Well the first tool that is a must-have is my travel hacking spreadsheet that is completely free to download. My travel hacking spreadsheet includes:

A cafe in Southern Spain might look a lot different than one in Portland, Oregon. The difference is very important.

Cafe or Restaurant? Why does it matter?

Despite many people use the words a restaurant or cafe interchangeably but they are not the same in some aspects.

Not only are they eateries, but they also serve as excellent meeting points for business people.

The pattern which is greatly influenced by the busy schedules in our current lives makes people lack time to prepare their meals at home and instead opt for fast food outside of their home.

More and more people throng into these establishments for quick meals. Although these two terms are commonly used by many, how many know the key differences between a cafe and a restaurant?

In this article, we are going to discuss the various aspects that make a restaurant or a cafe and their differences. We will look at various aspects including:

So, let’s start with fundamental aspects of a restaurant.

Overview of Restaurants

The first difference between a restaurant and café is in the underlying meaning of their name. Here we will break down restaurants in terms of definition, origin, functionality and price variation.

Meaning of Restaurant

Let’s break it down a bit further in two different buckets, including the meaning in a dictionary and literal sense.

Dictionary meaning of restaurant

When trying to establish whether an establishment is a restaurant or café, we can look at the definition as they are in the English dictionary.

A restaurant refers to an establishment In the French language where customers get served with drinks and meals. In a restaurant, customers not only order for their desired meals, but they also dine there in style.

Restaurants do not in most cases serve ready-made food but rather prepare orders from clients who make their choice from the provided menu. These establishments have a broad serving criterion whereby they offer delivery services to homes and offices. Customers can order at the convenience of their offices or homes, and the meals will be delivered.

Literal Meaning of restaurant

The word restaurant has its origin in the French language. Although restaurants have been there for a long time, the modern idea of it started in the 18th century in France.

The name restaurant came from the French name “restoratives” which meant soups served in the first restaurant called Bouillon. The initial aim of restaurants was to improve the quality of meals that were being served in the local inns.

Origin of Restaurant

Another difference that comes out when trying to find out if an establishment is a café or restaurant is in the history of their origin.

The history of restaurants goes way back into Rome and Ancient Greece where they were referred to as thermopolia. They were commercial places that served hot and ready-to-eat foods and drinks.

Since during this era many homes lacked kitchens, the restaurants were prevalent and were also highly used as meeting points for socializing.

The original thermopolia had L-shaped serving points (counters) with containers that carried hot meals and drinks.

Restaurants also were popular in China during the 11th century where they became trendy and even widened their scope of served meals. They now serve various styles of cuisine, varying prices and even foods for different religions.

However, the concept of restaurants as we know it in the modern word was perfected in Paris France in the 18th century and then grew to other regions in the globe such as the United States and Europe.

Functionality

The major and most notable difference between cafe and restaurant that anyone can identify with is their scope of service. A restaurant is a commercial establishment that serves their customers with foods and almost every kind of a drink including alcohol in the licensed ones.

Restaurants usually offer a wide range of options for a single meal such as the appetizers, entrees, salads, soups, and desserts. The mode of service in a hotel involves a waiter who attends to the customer as the customer sits and waits.

Most restaurants are built indoors, but some can have outdoor points where people can dine in good weather.

In restaurants, the waiters serve food upon order and tipping the waiter that serves you is a common practice.

Price Variations

Example of a Restaurant

Let’s now look at the features of a cafe.

What is a café

A café in Japan might include cats or hedgehogs. This is completely different than a café in Paris. Use these Japan travel tips to ensure you explore in the right way.

There is a difference between the meaning of a restaurant and that of a cafe. Here we will break down restaurants in terms of definition, origin, functionality and price variation.

Meaning of Café

Let’s break it down a bit further in two different buckets, including the meaning in a dictionary and literal sense.

Dictionary meaning of café

When trying to establish whether an establishment is a restaurant or cafe, we can also look at the definition of the cafe as it is in the English dictionary. A cafe, unlike a restaurant, can be defined as an establishment where customers come to have coffee. It refers to a place that serves their customers with coffee and snacks.

In most cases, the serving point is enclosed, but the customers can enjoy their coffee in an outdoor section of the establishment. Although the primary objective of a cafe is to serve coffee, in the US, the name has adapted another meaning whereby people regard it as an informal restaurant that serves burgers and sandwiches.

Literal Meaning of café

Similarly to restaurants, a cafe has its origin in France. Although the word has been in use in the English-speaking countries since the 19th century, it had been used in France for a long time.

The word cafe albeit originated from the French language is spelled the same way in various languages. In the English language, cafe and coffee come from the word caffe which is a variation of an Italian name spelled as cavee.

Origin

The history of origin is the other difference that comes out when trying to find out if an establishment is a cafe or restaurant.

In comparison to restaurants, cafes or coffeehouses as they were initially called started much later in history. A significant difference between cafe and restaurant can be seen in their place of origin and time in history. Cafes history is coined back to the Middle East even though much later than restaurants.

The original and initial cafes were established in Mecca during the 15th Century as political meeting points for Imams in the Muslim religion. However, they were banned in the 16th century but later emerged in Damascus, Cairo, and Istanbul.

The establishment of cafes and use of coffee then found its way to Europe from the 17th century and after that became as popular as we today know. The first cafe to be opened in the United States was opened in New York as a place for various entertainers in the 20th Century. Today, cafes are trendy, and they are now in almost any populated area around the globe.

Functionality

Cafes, on the other hand, are generally commercial business points that serve coffee and in some instances tea. In cafes unlike in restaurants, they have a broad scope of the types of coffee they serve including specialty coffees like lattes and mochas.

These joints are known for their variety in coffee types and snacks they serve. In recent times, some cafes are being referred to as informal restaurants as some have added to their menu things like soups and sandwiches.

Most of these joints have an open-air place where people can relax as they enjoy their coffee. Unlike in restaurants, in cafes, self-service is the order of the day and tipping the waiter in the cafes is optional.

Price Variations

When it comes to pricing, cafes tend to offer lower prices since the establishments have specialized in few products like coffee and maybe some snacks.

A café in Amsterdam, Netherlands may look a lot different than the Dallas, Texas. Or, a café in Paris might seem just as expensive as a restaurant. Sometimes is all relative and you need to use your best judgement call based on your geography at the time.

Cafe de Flore – Paris, France

Cafe de Flore is one of those classic Parisian cafes. Most of the old writers and painters used to hang out there like Ernest Hemingway and more. If you know a cafe from a restaurant, you’ll be in good shape travel abroad (especially Paris). Use these other travel hacks that don’t need a credit card.

Conclusion on Restaurant or Cafe

The two most known eating points in the world are either a restaurant or cafe. A restaurant or cafe is an ideal business opportunity. Personally, I love the cafe route much more than a restaurant. It allows me to take my time in a more relaxed setting. Plus, I loveeeeeee coffee.

And although many people may not differentiate between the two, the above differences can be found between them. I hope that this article has been of help on the same and you can now know whether you are dining at a restaurant or a cafe.

I would love to hear your opinion on the difference between a restaurant and cafe. Do know how to choose the difference from a restaurant or cafe? Let us know in the comments below.

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How to Choose a Restaurant

Restaurants liberate you from the task of preparing your own food, but it is better to have a peanut butter and jelly sandwich at home than bad food at a restaurant. Nothing makes you sicker than paying good money for bad food.

Most important criteria
for choosing a restaurant:

• The restaurant must be clean
• The restaurant must smell good
• There must be plenty of customers

If the restaurant does not look clean, the kitchen is probably worse. Skip it. If you cannot smell the food cooking, they are going to serve you leftovers or something that is not fresh. Skip it. If there are no people sitting at the tables, the food is probably bad, the service is terrible, the restaurant is expensive, or there is some reason why the local residents avoid it. You should too.

Other factors in choosing a restaurant:

Sometimes, you can find a good restaurant if you just follow your nose. When I was attending a conference in Santa Cruz, California, some members of our group were walking by a downtown street when we got a whiff of a delicious aroma. It was close to supper time, and we decided to follow the scent to see where it would lead us. After a couple of blocks, we ended up in an alley where an exhaust fan was the source of the smell. We went around the corner to the front of the building, and found a bar that was having a «happy hour» featuring Mexican tacos with chopped grilled meat piled on freshly made corn tortillas complemented by a zesty salsa. It was a delicious and memorable serendipitous experience.

Chain Restaurants and Franchises
The restaurant business is tough. To succeed, the restaurant manager has to buy ingredients at a reasonable price and use them while they are still fresh. Overstocked ingredients spoil and have to be thrown away, thus reducing profit. A large percentage of new restaurants fail due to economic problems or the inability to satisfy the needs of the customers because of bad waiters or inept cooks. A restaurant can also run into trouble when its food cannot be distinguished from what is served by competing restaurants. This usually happens when the entrГ©es contain prepackaged foods purchased from wholesalers such as Costco or Restaurant Depot.

Owners of successful restaurants try to increase profits by using the same model for new restaurants at different locations. Management techniques that were successful at one location usually produce another profitable restaurant at a new location. Chain restaurants take great care in assuring consistency in the quality of the food and the restaurant environment. A person visiting a chain restaurant like McDonald’s knows what to expect in the menu and how the food will taste. This consistency is achieved by supplying each restaurant from a common source where the quality can be controlled and by training the managers about sanitation and the day-to-day tasks required to provide a pleasant dining experience. The Chipotle franchise that promoted the use of fresh local produce suffered great financial losses in 2015 when some restaurants in several states were closed because of outbreaks of food-borne diseases caused by E. Coli, Salmonella and Norovirus. After that experience, Chipotle needed to evaluate methods for delivering wholesome food in order to rebuild customer confidence.

The top 10 restaurant chains in the U.S. ranked by sales are:

How do you choose a restaurant when travelling?

When travelling almost everyone wants to enjoy a local meal. It’s part of the travelling experience. If you’re not careful, you may end up in an expensive, «extremely» tourist-oriented place, which may not even represent the local gastronomy.

How do you pick a restaurant? Where do you search for information before travelling? Are there any good online guides?

On the spot what are the dos and don’ts? Do you ask locals? Are they a good source?

Note: The problem with locals is that sometimes they try to be extra nice with you and will send you exactly to places you want to avoid. They don’t eat in those places, but it’s common that they think it’s a nice place for you, since it’s always full of tourists 🙂

One of the problems with most review websites is that restaurants go into a positive spiral. They get attention for some reason. From there, they will attract more visitors due to their position, and of course, those visitors will review them again, reinforcing the spiral. That means one may be losing other, maybe even more interesting possibilities, if only looking at «tops».

20 Answers 20

There are some strategies that you can use:

Prepare: Check websites like Tripadvisor or Yelp before you go there. If you really want to plan, write down the restaurants you want to visit. Based on the ratings and comments there, you should be able to judge if it is an authentic restaurant with a good service.

Don’t stick to the main street: Very often, tourist places attract tourist restaurants. So to get a more authentic experience, go to the areas where not a lot of tourists go. Sometimes it is enough to just go one block off the main street and you will find no tourists.

Avoid obvious tourist traps: There are some hints that can tell you immediately if the restaurant is a tourist trap. As user1187008 pointed out for example, one should avoid restaurants with a big illustrated menu in English (especially, if English is not the local language)

Observe the locals: Check out where the locals go to eat. They know best what restaurants are good.

Use the internet: Try to find local blogs which emphasize of food. For every major city, you will find such food/restaurant blogs.

Be spontaneous: Tripadvisor and other websites have apps for smartphones that allow you to check the restaurants in the surroundings of your current location.

Ask a friend: As Rory Alsop pointed out, it is always a good idea to ask a local friend for advice if you know anybody at the destination.

I always consult Happycow. This is a website for vegetarian, vegan, and vegetarian-friendly restaurants. A good side-effect is that I end up at some very unusual and non-touristic places, and that the number of options reduced from hundreds to a handful or a few dozen at most. Perhaps you don’t always want to eat vegetarian, but even as a non-vegetarian you can eat vegetarian occasionally.

In November 2012 I passed through Warsaw and had lunch at the highly unlikely Surya restaurant. As I was looking for the restaurant I was convinced that I had the address wrong, because I completely left the old centre and found myself walking through a residential neighbourhood with high concrete flats and no stores or restaurants at all.

Surya Restaurant, Warsaw. A unique experience with no tourists.

I was there at a quite unusual time (15:30-ish), so it was quite empty inside, but considering the surroundings, the inside was quite a surprise:

Surya Restaurant inside.

There is no way I would have found a place like this simply by strolling around. I wouldn’t eat there every day (vegan raw food is a bit extreme), but as an occasional experience, even non-vegetarians may find themselves in quite unusual places off the beaten track.

Concerning asking locals: Sometimes I ask several, and it may be a good idea to say something like: I’m on a budget, cannot pay much. Then look at the food being served, at the people in the restaurant, at the menu, and all that usual stuff.

Also, it depends what food is common in the region. If you are close to the sea, for example, then it is likely that fish is good and cheap, sometimes even in tourist places.

More and more, I actually go *un*prepared. This lack of preconceived notion results in an experience that’s much more unique. Sure, you will not always end up at the ‘best’ place, but, clearly, that’s not what you are (or I am) looking for. For that, there’s a whole slew of apps and guidebooks.

And, it’s easy to avoid the tourist traps and overly popular places. Use side- and backstreets. Follow someone who looks like he’s going out for dinner. Walk for a few minutes in a random direction. Think about what you want to eat and then look for something completely different.

Throughout Europe I’ve been using the Michelin guides to find restaurants. They have a rating for fanciness and awesomeness of food. I usually go to the restaurants with one fork, which means it has good food for a good price (it tells you the price in the guide).
There is an app as well you can download and find all the restaurants in your area.

I used the app a lot in Scotland where we found amazing fish restaurants which otherwise would have been hard to find. Michelin tries to get you away from the tourist hot-spots and into the windy road with a charming restaurant at its end.
(I don’t work for Michelin, I just like what they do!)

An option sugested by a friend is asking in Couch Surfing forums. This is a very good place since the persons there are usually locals or live on the place for some time. They usually enjoy travelling also. To wrap this up, they have local knowledge and will probably understand what you’re looking for.

Local food groups

Like I mentioned in my answer on how to become a better tourist guide in your home city / country, one of the best ways of discovering of discovering the best local (and usually cheap) places to eat is to find out about the local food-lovers groups in the city. Some of these run scheduled, professionally organised walking food trips (like the one in Bangkok); most have some sort of food guide / blog to the city (search Google for «X food blog» or «X food lovers» where X is a city. These food guides are sometimes even available in printed form (for example, this guide on Istanbul food) and quite often they mention little-known gems that don’t «look» popular.

Apps / Websites

I have mixed feelings about apps (such as Foursquare) and sites such as TripAdvisor / Yelp. I have sometimes had good recommendations through these on what’s a good place to eat or what’s «popular» but over time what I’ve found is that these tend to skew towards places that are popular among just tourists as opposed to where the locals eat. (And more often than not, «popular» on user-contributed sites tend to mirror Lonely Planet recommendations just because it’s a most popular guide out there.) I’ve often been disappointed to find a place that had superlative reviews on user-contributed sites, because there is simply no way of knowing whether the reviewer can tell their schweinshaxe from their tabbouleh.

Food recommendations is one aspect in which think Wikivoyage / Wikitravel are massive failures. They may give you a very good general description of the dishes you can find in a country / region, but they are very bad at curating the best places to eat and presenting to it in a visually-useful manner. (Simply a classifieds-type listing without map information is very hard to turn into usable information while actually out and about in a city.) Moreover, I’ve found the ‘reviews’ or descriptions stray towards staying as neutral as they can, which is great for say monuments but not that much for something so obviously dependent on subjective judgement such as food.

Guidebooks

Top tip: when you buy a guidebook from Lonely Planet / Rough Guides / Frommer’s etc, flip to the section on author profiles and find out how long they have lived in the country. I’m not saying it’s impossible for someone who’s spent less time in a country to make good recommendations (depends on what local sources they tap) but my general observation has been that if it was an author sent to the country just for a few weeks to cover a particular section for their country, their recommendations are usually tepid. Look out for authors who have spent serious time in the country / region (say, at least a quarter of a year or more) and trust their recommendations more. Many guidebooks these days have multiple authors based on the region of the country, so you shouldn’t (dis)trust the book as a whole; just the bit that author themselves reviewed.

How to Choose a Cafe Name + 50 Cafe Name Ideas to Inspire You

Opening a cafe? Learn how to start gathering ideas and choose a cafe name.

The Ultimate Guide to Restaurant Branding

Use this guide to get tips on how to create a restaurant brand that stands out, attracts customers, and drives repeat visits.

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Cafe Name Ideas

Do you dream of becoming your neighborhood’s beloved caffeine source? Making relationships with regular customers? Building a strong, supportive team of early-rising baristas, bakers, cooks, and managers? Drinking coffee all day? You might be ready to open a cafe.

One of the first steps in building your cafe is choosing a name. It’s the name that’ll be emblazoned all over your shop, your cups, your social media accounts, your aprons, and maybe even your napkins. That means it’s gotta be a name you really like, and one that represents your business effectively, in a clear but memorable and meaningful way. Sound like a tall order? No worries. We’ll walk you through the four major steps of naming a cafe, from brainstorming to consulting with your community.

How Do I Choose a Cafe Name?

Here’s a brief overview of how to start gathering ideas and choose a restaurant name.

Write down your coffee shop’s core values, mission, description, team, and location

Ensure your coffee shop name isn’t already taken

Play around with a name generator to spark new ideas (and rule out the types of names you don’t want)

Reach out to your community for coffee shop name ideas

We’ll go into detail about each of these steps below, and then get into some cool cafe name examples.

What are good cafe names?

A great cafe name should be unique to your restaurant. It should stick in the minds of your first-time patrons, and it should convey your restaurant branding, your personality, and what makes your business unique. If you can fit it in, it can also be helpful to use your cafe name to let potential patrons know what kind of goods they can get from you. A good cafe name is also easy to spell and remember, so that your potential guests can easily find you on Google.

With all that in mind, here are some tips to get you started on the path to discovering the right restaurant name for your new spot.

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How to choose a cafe when you’re travelling

Here’s the secret: you don’t need to do anything. You don’t need to achieve anything. You don’t need to busy yourself with anything or be concerned that people are judging you for not doing so. When it comes to hanging around in a foreign cafe, all you have to do is be.

Just sit there. Stare out at the passers-by and enjoy a little people-watching. Take in the bustle or the peace of the place you’re in. Watch as coffees are poured and tea is taken. Check out the plates going past and see what people are eating. Read a local newspaper. Pull out a book. Check the news on your phone.

Or just sit back and sip your drink and enjoy an experience that has always seemed so vital and yet for a time during the pandemic was taken away from us.

There are few pleasures more delicious than hanging around in a foreign cafe. Some might consider it time wasted but to me it’s time perfectly spent, time to slow down, time to take in, time to enjoy.

There’s a feeling of discomfort when you begin to do this, a feeling that people are staring at you, that the wait staff are getting grumpy with you for taking up a table, that there are all these real tourist attractions out there that you’re missing out on.

But those feelings soon pass.

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You just need to choose the right sort of cafe. Don’t go anywhere too busy or too small. You don’t want to take up a table that someone else could be using. You want a venue with space, where waiters will leave you be, leave you to nurse your coffee for an hour or two and relax.

Look for other patrons reading newspapers or working on laptops. This is a place to spend time. No one here cares.

Choose a cafe with a view, somewhere with tables that look out onto the street, a place where you can either watch the world go by or cocoon yourself in your own caffeinated universe.

Order a drink that will take some time to consume. Coffee is good, you can sit on that for a while. Maybe get a snack or two. Justify your existence.

And then, relax. Look, listen, sip, repeat. The hours slip by when you do this, when you watch foreign life take place in front of you like a film, as you spot tiny interactions between people, as you notice previously unseen local quirks, as you see life in this place ebb and flow, as customers arrive and leave, as the sun slides across the sky and your drink gets lower and eventually you decide to rejoin the slipstream of local life.

For hours you haven’t done anything. And that’s the secret.