Day 3058 (Wednesday) 22nd October 2025

This is a private beach in Nice called Castel.

Huw had to clean Ken’s pool today and while he was gone I sunbathed for a while but the chilly wind soon forced me back indoors. The sun was still shining and the bay looked great but the wind was cold.

This was Badger yesterday playing in his toy box.

Huw went shopping in Super U this morning and Halloween has arrived.

Why does France have so many cafés?

People sit on the terrace of a cafe in the evening sunshine on the Left Bank, central Paris. (Photo by Kiran RIDLEY / AFP)

The café is an iconic part of French culture - but exactly how many are there in France, and are they all economically viable?

It’s almost the law that anyone living in or visiting France should sit down at a café terrace with a teeny-tiny cup of espresso and watch the world go by.

Such is the essence of Frenchness about café culture that efforts have been made to get the country’s bistros and cafés on to Unesco’s ‘intangible cultural heritage’ list, rather like the baguette, which made the list in 2022.

Crucially, it's the whole lifestyle and ethos surrounding French cafés - the world-watching, conviviality and the 'art of living' – that café owners want recognised.

Café history

According to history buffs, coffee officially arrived in France in 1669 when the ambassador of the Ottoman Empire brought bags of beans that made what he described as a ‘magical beverage’ to the court of King Louis XIV. 

Within two years, the first coffee shop opened in Paris, not far from the Louvre, run by an Armenian who went by the name of Pascal. The business failed, but still sowed the seeds of France’s café culture.

One of the waiters at the original café opened another – Le Precope – a few years later and it became a favourite venue for philosophers and writers, including Voltaire and La Fontaine, Rousseau and Diderot.

The French ideal of coffee and conversation dawned right there, right then as the well-to-do assembled to discuss politics and philosophy and  - a century or so later - Revolution.

From the beginning, French cafés were as much about conversation and ambience as they were about getting a hit of caffeine.

These days the line between a café, a bar and a restaurant is somewhat blurred - almost all French cafés serve alcohol and most serve at least some food options.

The classic café is also open all day - starting with coffee and pastries in the morning and staying open until 10pm or later for evening drinks. However opening times do vary according to staffing levels, especially in smaller towns or villages.

The 'coffee shop' that serves coffee and cake and focuses on daytime custom is a more recent addition, and is largely an import from the US.

So how many cafés does France have?

Less than is used to, that's for sure.

In the early 1900s, France had 500,000 bar-cafés. In the 1960s, it’s estimated there were 200,000.

In 2021, France’s Institut National de la Statistique et des Etudes Economiques (Insee) counted 34,600 businesses in the sector, compared to 40,000 at the beginning of the 2010s.

Around 83,650 people worked in the bar and café sector in France in 2023, most of them working in smaller establishments that employ two or three staff.

Waiters in Paris even have an annual race - they race over a 4km course through the city centre carrying a tray with a glass of water, a cup of coffee and a croissant  - as well as being a fun event, the idea is to showcase the skill of being a server, and of the importance of France's café culture.

The changing culture

But as the numbers show, French cafés are declining, and it's especially a problem in small villages.

In May 2025, MPs adopted a bill making it easier to open a bar in smaller villages that didn’t have one, with backers saying it would revive rural socialising.

It is difficult to estimate how many villages might benefit from the law, but 31,000 out of 35,000 municipalities have fewer than 3,500 inhabitants, according to the association of French mayors.

The decline in the number of venues, and government efforts to prop up the industry by relaxing licensing laws in certain areas indicates a concern that a way of life is declining. 

While there’s still clearly a need for France’s traditional bar-café – especially as a local hub in more rural areas – it’s also clear an evolution is taking place. The world today is very different from the one 125 years ago.

Alcohol consumption is declining. Cars make it easier for people to travel further. The arrival of multinationals like McDonald’s and Starbucks has changed even French stereotypes – there’s a reason France is McDo’s second biggest market.

People living in larger urban areas may not notice a decline in the number of cafes, as much as an increase in the number of franchise coffee shops (think Starbucks, Etienne, or Club Cafe) and, these days, the artisanal French coffee shop – a 21st-century version of the old-style French café.

Meanwhile, fast-food restaurants and bakeries have got in on the act. The likes of Paul, Ange, and Marie Blachère all do variations on a coffee-shop theme.

This is where the real change is. According to Collectif Café, a French specialty coffee federation, coffee shops are opening weekly across the country. In early 2024, there were about 4,000 of them up and down the country.

Coffee shops are seen as welcoming places with sofas and coffee served in mugs. They’ve captured an all-day service zeitgeist, and offer food and snacks that at least look ‘home-made’.

Starbucks may be the coffee-shop cliche – in France, it and Columbus Café & Co generated more than €100 million in revenue in 2023, a Statistica report noted – but it’s not the coffee bean-all and end-all in France.

This is where the French-style venues come into their own. Some have integrated remote working into their business plan; others do their best to ban laptops and tablets, insisting on olde-style conviviality. Almost all of them are comfortable and relaxed and offer tempting foods and snacks and want you to spend a little time, as well as a chunk of money.

Increasingly, too, as French coffee palates graduate from its traditional double-roasted robustica – an acquired tastebud-stripper of a taste if ever there was one – to a wider variety of beans, cofficionadoes head to places like this to try out new coffees.

So, why are cafés so popular in France? Because they almost always have been. And, as things do and must, they’re changing with the times.