If the food you want to eat happens to match the order placed by the person in front of you, that’s delightful; even if you end up eating something you hadn’t expected, there’s its own kind of delight. There’s joy too in knowing that the food you ordered, which you wanted to eat, will be served as a gift to someone else. In particular, the fact that, through the café, you and the person in front of you, and you and the person behind you, are momentarily connected and share a small moment of communion — that becomes another point of interest for those familiar with social networks.
At the café, you’re not just eating what you ordered; you’re forming a relationship with the person in front of and behind you, getting a gift from someone while giving a gift to someone else, and feeling interest in the unpredictability of what you’ll eat. Several elements combine. (p. 87)
From Life Trend 2013: The Return of the Guys Who Played Around a Bit by Kim Yong-seop (Booki).
In Chiba, Japan, there’s an unusual café called the “Kashiwa Mystery Café.” Here, the person who orders and pays does not get to eat that food. Instead, the next person eats the meal you ordered. You eat the meal that the person in front of you ordered and paid for. Because you don’t know what you’ll eat, the café’s name is “Mystery Café.”
Since it’s a café, the price differences among the menu items probably aren’t huge, and you won’t take much of a “loss” in the ordering process. The very fact that you don’t know what you’ll eat can be fun. And if you end up eating something unexpected — or the exact thing you wanted — you might feel some joy. Above all, you may end up forming an unexpected “relationship” and a conversation, mediated by food you ordered, with someone you don’t know. That, too, can be interesting.
I’m not sure how well this café actually does. It’s a new and intriguing café, but I do have doubts about its sustainability. What’s clear, though, is the fact that a café like this has emerged at all.
The idea that you can combine “relationships” in this way with existing products and services… It’s a cross-section of our society’s trends, and a reason it’s worth paying attention to this café.
Yeh Byeong-il’s Economy Note — Twitter: @yehbyungil / Facebook: www.facebook.com/yehbyungil
