In this article, we are going to discuss how we can formulate a crypto chillhop cafe as a quick hipster startup business model. This is a compelling model for you to pursue and we are going to look at previous and current implementation and leverage our experience to optimize the model.

The café model in 2025 is a new paradigm and has a lot of opportunities. Starbucks is an incumbent model that tried to do woke stuff and didn’t fire that woman employee who called the police on the two brothers sitting and waiting for their party in Philadelphia.

We consider the new model of specialized cafes to be the equivalent of a SME crab boil restaurant to Red Lobster that is now struggling. It’s a big opportunity for the smaller entrepreneur to carve out a niche on a market that the big corporations cannot specialize at the small scale, creating an competitive advantage.

There is another major plus is people are not doing nightclubs or nightlife anymore. That scene is dead and dying. Instead, people are breaking out their laptops and going to co-working spaces, fitness centers, and cafes with wi-fi as their third space.  This is another great opportunity with the great social shift in our society.

In this article, we are going to discuss two café models that we have seen in Asia that can be adopted here in America as well as other parts of the world. The first is the crypto café where a café has a crypto theme and the second is a chillhop café where it has a chill atmosphere.

The purpose of this article is to show how to converge both models and create both the benefit of a crypto café and a chillhop café for combined experience. Also, I have personally been to both types of cafes in several places around the world and have personal experience and observation.

Crypto Café

A crypto café is themed around crypto and geared towards crypto enthusiasts. The features I seen overall on a crypto café is customers can pay with crypto, can network with others to talk crypto, and look at current crypto prices.

The following elements I have observed from crypto cafes:

Purchase with Crypto. Users can purchase from the menu with crypto. This may be a nice strategy because the crypto can be held as an asset and not taxable until sold. But all of the cafes I went to accept cash to keep the lights on. Also remember, people used to buy pizza with crypto a decade ago; today cryptocurrency prices are elevated now so we must have a different approach to crypto owners.

Themed Menu. The menu have cute crypto names like a Blockchain Americano, Ledger Latte or something like that. Packaged cookies with the Doge dog or the Bitcoin or Ethereum theme. I don’t know who is excited about eating cookies with a Bitcoin logo, let’s be honest.  

Wall Displays with Crypto Prices. These are actually YouTube live streaming videos that you can type in the URL and put on full-screen model to show various crypto transactions and latest ask/bid price.

NFT Gallery. This is the one in Thailand – I thought this was awesome and very nice way to showcase local NFT artists and maybe they can host a popup at the café, bringing in more customers.

Co-working Spaces. The one video with the brotha at the crypto café in Phuket – that place is awesome! It had a recording studio, presentation room, meeting room, office booths and focused more on a crypto and co-working theme. I would definitely hang out there every day.

The reality with crypto spaces and if you look at the videos – no one is there. All the crypto cafes I have been to did not have customers, just me popping in. You see the same in the crypto café videos, where is everybody?

Most of the crypto cafes in the video are closed and it’s safe to guess the reason is lack of customers and lack of interest in sitting around talking about Bitcoin.

Chillhop Café

A chillhop café is new and it has a lot of potential and excitement to me. In this model, the café plays chillhop music either recorded or a live DJ. I want you to understand something about chillhop music because it is creative destruction – what music genre is being replaced by chillhop?

When I was in Japan, my favorite café in Ginza played smooth jazz for years. There was nothing like that in the USA and I developed many of my products in that café – I posted plenty of pictures of me coding there. Last year, I went there and the music was different – it was chillhop and they converted completely to chillhop.

There is a reason why and you better listen – most chillhop is royalty free meaning you can play it without the licensing fees you have to do with BMI/ASCAP playing popular songs. That is a huge cost savings for a café. Not all genre are chillhop but let’s talk about how a chillhop café operates.

What do you notice about the chillhop cafes if you saw the videos? Let’s cover the components.

No Liquor License. Coffee has a higher profit margin than drink pour. You can be up and running with a poached Starbuck employee making the drinks.

DJ Playing Chilled Tracks. No violent, ignorant rapper music and stupid sex-laced females singing goofy songs.

Video Streaming. That’s how you build up the market by playing segment on YouTube to promote both the DJ and your café.  

Royalty-free or Licensed Music. This is probably Epitonic but I don’t know but you can have your DJ curate the music and make sure they are cleared and not to play anything but the chilled stuff.

Do not confuse this with a hole in a wall chicken joint or crab boil with a DJ playing crazy music like it’s a party. This is a space where people looking for a relax third space and have a chilled experience and can work on their laptop or bring a mature friend with them. Remember – lower profit margin and less ghetto and attract a professional/urban/crowd.

Your competition will be co-working spaces, cafes, and violent ignorant nightclubs and you will win them all with a chillhop model.

The Convergence

Today, you can create a better modern café model, combining the best of crypto café and chillhop café and create a daytime third space. You will be turning both Starbucks and the nightclub into Radio Shack and Toys R Us, basically and you will be growing.

For the coffee and drinks, I would consider a wider array of donuts, French bakery that are brought in instead of made in-store. Only the coffee would be made at the café.

For the screens, I would not only show crypto prices but probably will show NFT art for sale with a QR code and get a commission off the sale.

In addition to the café area, definitely expand to have meeting rooms, and co-working spaces. Charge hourly rental and have to be reserved from a mobile phone or kiosk.

In terms of accepting crypto – I found this to be a novelty and not worth bringing it up. In Japan where crypto was supposed to be everywhere, what I found was the merchant wanted cash so they have funds to restock and have cash flow on hand. Settling crypto can be a pain and banks are not friendly to crypto cash out going into their bank and will debank very fast without asking questions.

I want to bring up something for the Early Adopter – this model can be built using Toshikiso and we will actually build a working simulator using Ben Banneker and Tina Holmes AI skills. Remember that the Early Adopters who supported me can leverage this model while everybody else got to pay what they owe on the invoice, because they supported the goofballs on YouTube and TikTok while Early Adopters supported a real one like Ed Dunn.

The crypto and chillhop combination can bring in a better class of customers, the coffee and bakery is high-margin, low wholesale cost, the music is chilled to keep them there longer, and business amenities to charge for additional revenue. And don’t forget those digital screens can display advertising, NFT assets for sale for commission and more revenue streams.