Day 7 - Teddy Bears in Coffee Shops

I work in coffee shops for a ridiculously long time - way before it was cool. Being a developer helps a lot - if I would be a hair stylist, I highly doubt I could do it from a coffee shop. I'm lucky, I know, and I'm grateful for this.

I've been doing this on 4 continents, in dozens, if not hundreds of places.

Yet, there is only one place where I found teddy bears in coffee shops: Asia.

I think I first saw this in Korea, but it's Vietnam where this is more prevalent.

How does this work?

Well, there are huge, fluffy toy teddy bears sitting at some of the coffee shop tables. Just like that.

I asked around and I found out that this was made popular by Haidilao, a popular hot pot franchise chain. Because their restaurants looked a bit depressing when empty, they started to put teddy bears at some of the empty tables. They don't really cost much and the effect was surprisingly positive: people started to feel less lonely. I know, it sounds weird, but there is something nice and warming about sitting next the a huge teddy bear in an almost empty coffee shop.

After Haidilao became instantly popular as a result of this teddy bear move, other chains and coffee shops adopted the idea. Now you can see big, fluffy teddy bears in many high profile coffee shops and the term "teddy bear" started to carry more meaning than it does for us, Westerners.

In some Asian countries, "got teddy bear" actually means: "I got a girlfriend".