Not Every Café Needs to Go Viral

“Wait, don’t drink it.”

“Why?”

“I haven’t filmed it yet.”

If that conversation sounds familiar, you’ve probably spent enough time in a viral café. Somewhere along the way, the coffee became secondary to the content. If your “hidden gem” café has a two-hour queue and two million views on TikTok, I’ve got bad news: it isn’t hidden anymore. Apparently, every week I’m discovering another “hidden” café.

Funny how they all rack up millions of views. Within days, everyone’s ordering the same food, sitting in the same corner seat, and filming the same TikTok as if they discovered the place first. Take Perth’s Daily Practice: its viral drinks and curated interiors have made it one of the city’s most talked-about cafés. Somewhere along the way, “hidden gem” stopped meaning hidden. 

Before you accuse me of wanting to keep all the good coffee to myself, that’s not it. I love small cafés, but we don’t need a digital campaign to support them. A positive Google Maps review is still one of the most sustainable, low-drama ways to help. Of course, a viral TikTok can change a café’s fortunes overnight, bringing a sudden flood of attention and sales. On paper, that sounds amazing. But it doesn’t just bring more customers, it completely changes what they are coming for.

When a café becomes a viral destination, we completely lose the element of surprise. TikTok shows us the perfect drink, the perfect corner, and the perfect café before we even arrive. We already know what to order, where to sit, and what to film.

Are we trading the raw, spontaneous joy of discovery for a hollow checklist of aesthetic keepsakes?

— Kayla Setiawan

Maybe the internet has convinced us that every good café deserves millions of views. I’m not so sure. A café doesn’t need to become a TikTok destination to be successful. Sometimes, the best cafés aren’t the ones everyone knows about. Maybe they’re the ones you stumble across yourself, actually enjoy, and quietly recommend to a friend. At this point, it’s hard to tell whether you’ve walked into a café or a TikTok set.

And that’s what makes me wonder: are we actually discovering cafés, or just recreating the version of them we’ve already seen online?