Opinion | Coffee + cacophony: why is the music so deafeningly loud at some cafes and restaurants, whether for breakfast, lunch or dinner?

Some cafes, bars and restaurants seem to think playing music loud enough to melt your brain is good for business. Worst of all, some of it is rap music

Apparently it’s backed up by science – the faster and louder the music is, the quicker customers consume food and drink. This writer’s not buying it

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Why you can trust SCMP

Whatever happened to conversation over a coffee? At some cafes it’s become impossible, so earsplittingly loud is the music they play. Photo: Getty Images

Stephen McCarty

Published: 6:45pm, 25 Jan 2022

It’s not funny how stopping for breakfast at a coffee bar can be the equivalent of a trip to the dentist’s chair. Not because you’ve broken a tooth on your double hummus coconut tzatziki spinach crunch wrap, but because your fillings have been rattled out by the piledriving soundtrack to the obligation to consume food.

How is it that eateries of all descriptions can be so brain-meltingly LOUD!? Is there a decree mandating that in certain establishments the coexistence of conversation and dining is forbidden? Is there a further rule that the thump-thump-thumping rhythm of all chew-chew-chewing activities should follow the beat of that brand of aural vandalism so widely mistaken for music: rap?

Perhaps these purveyors of comestibles have been brainwashed into believing that offensive lyrics at bunker-buster-bomb detonation volume are a natural accompaniment to mastication. The coffee bar in which this correspondent’s ears were recently nailed to a wall was in New York, but the same sonic assault and battery could have been perpetrated in a certain, expensive Vietnamese restaurant in Hong Kong, a cafe in London or a souvlaki joint in Sydney.

Not only has the “slow food movement” not caught on worldwide, but it seems to be on fast forward, turned up to 11.

There’s nothing like having a relaxing coffee, but this is becoming more and difficult to enjoy. Photo: Getty Images

Surprisingly, however, as with the crafty placement of chocolate bars and other impulse-buy goods close to supermarket checkouts, there is some science behind the philistinism.