Hands off Suspended Coffee!

Il caffè sospeso was an Italian philanthropic practice which was really popular in the first part of the twentieth century, especially in Naples. The practice was really simple and consisted of buying one-more coffee than the coffees people actually needed. A lone person used to ask for two coffees, a couple for three, etc., telling the barista that one coffee was sospeso, suspended. The suspended coffee was momentarily not served, but saved for a poor person who would enter the bar soon. Obviously, il caffè sospeso was really popular with the Neapolitan homeless people, who used to enter the bars asking if, by chance, there was a caffè sospeso.

In Italy, this practice is still present, but has gradually declined in popularity. However, when it was supposed that we would never buy one-more coffee for the rest of our lives, suddenly suspended coffee became popular again. Not in Italy (at least at first), and not at the old bars and cafes, but thanks to charities and big cafe chains. In many famous cafes belonging to these chains, in fact, you can buy one-more coffee. Your name will be written on a blackboard that all the customers will see and the money you have given for one-more coffee will be passed onto a charity, which will use it to buy a coffee for a needy person.

It's quite easy to understand that the name is the same, but what today is called suspended coffee is something very different from il caffè sospeso. In one word, what has become lost is spontaneity. While in the past the bar mediated between the donor and the receiver, now the company encourages giving in a commercial context. On many Facebook pages, the company praises the donors, to persuade other people to do the same. Thus, the company uses this practice to attract new customers, to whom it promises praises. Thus, today suspended coffee is only a commercial strategy.

Moreover, spontaneity is also lost from the point of view of the receiver. In fact while in the past the needy person required to play an active role, deciding to enter the bar and ask for a suspended coffee, today it is the charity (or the company) that decides who is the lucky person. Other times, even more different from the original, one suspended coffee is activated automatically, each time a coffee is sold. Again, it is only a strategy to sell more.

What to say? Certainly giving and receiving has changed over the last thirty or forty years, and today the old mechanism of il caffè sospeso would be considered paternalistic. In fact, today the sharing economy offers us more adequate ways of giving. Moreover, many people might consider upsetting to see a homeless person into the bar. But what to do with the old practices? I would like that old habits such as il caffè sospeso disappear, becoming material for historians. Seeing their name exploited, and them turned into a further mechanism to make money, instead, is quite upsetting.