Having just gotten back from Europe, I’ve seen approximately 7.6 million cafes in the past few weeks.  As I wandered from cafe to cafe — dinner and dessert and beer require separate cafes, sometimes — I began to notice patterns.  Let’s call them axioms, ’cause that makes me sound smarter.

Axiom #1: Busy cafes just get busier.

Like, there’s a perfectly good cafe right there with 14 open tables, but THAT cafe has no seats available, so it must be good!  We need to go there!  This makes no real sense, as you’re more likely to get attentive service and decent food at a cafe that has less customers.

Axiom #2: Anything but gray.

Gray is the new…

nothing.  Gray is not the red cafe chair of Paris.  Gray is not the slightest bit charming.  Gray is modern and hip and trendy, but not bright or cheery.

Cafe chairs that were NOT bright colors were much less likely to be full than those that fit the traditional, warmly-colored wicker stereotype.  Maybe because Parisians have a secret anti-gray stereotype.  Maybe gray-chaired-cafes are full of snooty waiters.  Maybe red chairs come from the factory laced with the scent of fresh baguettes.

Whatever.  Gray chairs = less people.  Gray chairs + gray facade = the last cafe to fill up, end of story.

People like warm, friendly, and inviting.  They want to eat at cafes displaying these attributes, even if they’re busy.  (At which point the cafe will just get busier.  See odd pattern #1.)

Axiom #3:  Sugar cubes are superior to sugar packets.

Yah, it’s a lame, non-business-y axiom.  Fine. You don’t want the axiom, I’ll box it up and send it to starving kids in third-world countries, where they appreciate any axiom they can get.

Right, so.  What do our axioms teach us?

Be inviting.  What’s the internet equivalent of a red chair?  (I don’t know, love, but it’s your job to contemplate it.)  How can you let clients know you’re happy to see them?  How can you get your business a bit busier and bumping?  Because we know that busy businesses get busier.  If people think you have something magical/fabulous/fantastical that’s in demand, they want it, too.  And they’ll show up in droves to get it.

Oh, and I need to buy sugar cubes next time I restock the pantry.