When BYU students Katherine Shirley and Mark Apker show up around 11 p.m. at their favorite “24-hour de-café,” they don’t worry about leaving in a hurry.

Instead, they sprawl out on a couch with a caramel hot chocolate or cherry cremosa to study in a relaxed atmosphere.

“A place like Vermillion Skies just fits, it belongs,” said Apker, 22, a BYU student from Oregon, majoring in history and political science. “It reminds me of home and I belong here. It’s a slice of the West Coast transplanted to Provo.”

These students have spent time at Vermillion Skies Café at least twice a week since it opened two and half months ago, but it’s not coffee that addicts BYU students to cafés like this — it’s the atmosphere where students can feel like they belong.

Cafés and coffeehouses are a growing trend in Utah Valley, with two new Starbucks announced to open this summer.

Within the last year, BYU students have gone more and more to places like Hollywood Juice Café, Reds Coffeehouse and Vermillion Skies.

“In Seattle and Portland they have coffee shops everywhere,” said Christin Johnson, 22, a BYU student and owner of Vermillion Skies Café. “I think this new generation of kids is bringing ideas from their home to Provo and Provo is relaxing enough to incorporate pop culture into LDS culture and still maintain standards.”

Glenn Christensen, a consumer behavior expert from the BYU Marriott School of Management, said there is a third place, which is an informal gathering area, as opposed to the first two places—home and work.

Café’s are a place to hang out and create identity. The need for identification and a third place has spilled over from Europe to Utah County, he said.

“There’s a large macro-level movement in our whole culture,” Christensen said. “It’s a focus on what is called the third place, which grew out of the sterilization of the turn of the century.”

Historically people gathered informally downtown, but society spread out with suburbs and cars, and now people unite at commonplaces like coffee houses.

“At a deeper level, I think BYU students need this third place and the Wilkinson Center isn’t as cool as this ‘Friends’ coffeehouse,” Christensen said. “The smell of books mingled with coffee feels academic and college-ish. Students want this academic experience percolated with friends.”

Christensen said that people get atomotized — like atoms all by themselves — and pine for more social connections.

In the ‘80s, people came together at the strip mall, but in the ‘90s the growth of strip malls plummeted because people felt they were too sterile, said Christensen.

“The cafe trend has always been a part of Europe and has spilled over to the United States when we became too distant in an artificial way and needed to unite,” he said. “It’s a third place where you read the paper and bump into friends — just like the café on the show ‘Friends.’”

Christensen said trends start on the northwest coast and work their way to Utah.

Johnson said her café is a place to get away to somewhere besides library, where you can still be functional while relaxing. She called it “safe relaxation.”

“Everybody wants to own something — couples have their song, people have their favorite color and their favorite band,” she said. “The same loyalty that helps identify a person applies to places, and Vermillion Skies is very own-able. It’s personable, intimate, gentle and you can bring pretty much anything you want to it without faking.”

Vermillion Skies Café is different than a traditional coffeehouse. It’s a “24-hour de-café,” serving alternative beverages to coffee.

“Being LDS (myself), how responsible would it be of me to sell a product I don’t believe people should consume?” she said. “It would be comparable to a drug-dealer. There are quite a few BYU students who don’t go into places like coffeehouses because they want to avoid the appearance of evil.”

Red’s Coffeehouse opened nine months ago in downtown Provo and is proud of their coffee.

“You have to decide who you want to please more — the coffee crowd or the hot cocoa crowd and I chose the coffee crowd,” said David Blanco, the 19-year-old owner from American Fork.

Blanco’s coffee shop, with its dimmed lights and deep red color scheme, is reminiscent of classy European coffeehouses.

Blanco said the coffee is technically addictive, but people can have any drink and if it is good and they like the atmosphere they will be addicted and come back every day.

“BYU students are addicted and keep coming back because of comfort, service, the look of the place, the feel of the place and the other people in here,” he said.

He also said that his customers are usually not from the area, and if they are from Utah Valley, they were raised differently than most LDS people.

“I know a lot of people that say they would support me but it’s against their religion,” Blanco said. “They have to not feel like they are going against anything by coming in here. They can drink hot cocoa and feel ok about being in a coffee shop.”

A coffeehouse is a place where BYU students can take a date, spend only $5 and sit down for three hours in good conversation.

Blanco said BYU students come in mostly Friday and Saturday nights at the end of every semester, when they finally discover this alternative hangout.

The owners of these cafés found a market in a town of college students that hadn’t been touched.

“It’s something that so many other college towns have — small quirky places like this where students hang out,” said Shirley, 20, a BYU student, from Washington, majoring in physiology, who regular visits Vermillion Skies Café.

Whitney Mower, 18, a UVSC student, from Salt Lake City, studying English, said she likes the pseudo-intellectual and artsy environment of cafés.

Another UVSC student, Cole Woolley, 23, from Morgan, Utah studying English, said coffee shops are a place for students to just go and talk without planning or spending lots of money.

This growing trend of cafés fills the need of a third place and gives BYU students a taste of what other college students experience in these pseudo-intellectual and comfortable atmospheres.

“You get a drink, sit down and chill,” Apker said. “That’s what I am used to and that’s what I like. This growing trend of cafés doesn’t seem to be stopping any time soon.”



Copyright Brigham Young University 10 May 2005