Rise of the Coffee Shop

A few years ago Oakham High Street like many others in the UK was showing signs of the rescission caused by the banking crisis. You couldn't help notice the boarded up shop fronts as small family run shops closed one by one. Businesses that in some cases had been in the town for years. It hard to imagine what it was like for the shop owners to see something they built over years finally come to an end. 

If you come to Oakham today you will see a different High Street, one that is fall of restaurants, fast food and the mania that seems to be gripping the towns all over the England. They have popped up where ever their seems to be a free shop of a suitable size, and Oakham is now different from anywhere else. Posh clothes shops, traditional sweet shops and like have been replaced by posh coffee shop.

It is the rise of the coffee shop, but the growth isn't just due to the demand for coffee but more a sign of cheap rents in the High Street that makes selling coffee profitable. Sell coffee at £2 to £3 ago requires you to sell a lot of coffee to pay the rent and the wages of the staff that work in them. It is a retail area that has very low profit margins compared to other businesses on the High Street and it if rents raise again then you can be sure that some of the coffee shops will be no more.  

What you will see in the next couple of years is the High Street changing again as the coffee shops close. One of two things will happen, either the shops will be be reused by other businesses or they will be boarded up. It will be interesting to see which way it goes, especially given the rise of Internet shopping and in Oakham's case the introduction of two more supermarkets which ultimately remove money from the local economy, something that seem to be overlooked when these companies are given planning permission.