As a Neapolitan, born and proudly raised, I would like to explain that there is no charitable spirit behind this tradition. There is instead a strong celebratory meaning to it, that seems to be understated in the article.
Originally the recipient of such act was not meant to be someone in need, but simply the customer right after the one 'suspending' the coffee.
It is very hard to really understand the meaning of it without understanding how socially ubiquitous coffee is in Naples. It is always good to start a pleasant evening out with a shared coffee where friends usually fight over who has the honor of paying the bill for everyone. Also, in the city lingo, "let's go have a coffee" can be a clear invite to an easygoing date.
Paying a coffee to a stranger, just a random person passing by, is a way to say "I'm happy and I wish you the same".
Most of the stuff you say easily extends to a large part of Italy. I know coffee in Rome is often not as good as in Naples, but we also go on coffee dates and fight to be the one to pay for everyone.
I would like to convey the pleasure of paying for 5 friends when I come back from abroad: 4.20 € and a a coffee that actually tastes like it should. Really makes you feel like some small generous deity!
I think coffee is an habit in most of south-western Europe, and people do drink a lot of it in northern Italy too (how they can manage to drink the stuff is beyond me, though)
U.S. people have Starbucks and as long as they do not try anything else they also manage to enjoy it.
It's increasingly a religious ritual in the United States as well but one that is restricted to the subset of people who are customers of roasters and coffee shops that are part of the Third Wave.
Don't be too snarky about Starbucks: coffee before Starbucks was much worse than it is now. From the wikipedia article linked in the sibling comment you'll see that Starbucks pretty much sparked the good coffee revolution in the US.
I do understand the role of Starbucks in bringing coffee on the hip-train. I only tried the stuff they sell to our European cousins and now I no longer wonder why there is maybe just one or no Starbucks in Italy.
I hope I will be able to try their brew in the US, hopefully it will be better.
There's a place here in Philly that sells $1 slices of pizza and for an additional $1 you can buy a Post-It note to stick on the wall that someone in need can then redeem for a slice.
Thanks, now I have a name for something I was introduced to in my small town when the person in front of me paid for my coffee without my knowledge - Until I went to pay the bill. So I, in turn, bought for the next car (drive through local espresso shop).
I have done it a half dozen times in the last few months, and hope it is helping to spread holiday cheer right now, something many of my fellow towns people could do with more of. Too many scare tactics in national media, good to remind people to take care of each other locally with anonymous acts of generosity.
(Not an important point, but it's kind of an unfortunate title. As someone who knew about the practice and its supposed origin in Naples, I thought the article was saying the practice does not (did not) ever actually exist in Naples. (In Naples, Gift of Coffee to Strangers Never Seen), i.e. despite the myth that it's common there.
It would be unambiguous if changed to "In Naples, Gift of Coffee to Unseen Strangers.")
That's a great tradition, that could be applied to not just coffee and pizza. Hope it takes off at other food joints as well.
On a side note, you wonder how many poor people go to coffee bar Gambrinus, featured in the article. It's well known, but a caffè costs more than 2 euro's there, whereas coffee bars in living neighbourhoods charge 70 euro cents. Gambrinus is a place where tourists and well-to-do's frequent.
That's a great tradition! From an economics perspective, I would gain way more than $2 worth of utility from discovering that someone had randomly paid for my coffee, it would really make my morning.
I wonder if the benefit would decrease if the practice became more common though. Would I start expecting my coffee to be free, and become disappointed when I had to pay for it?
I have seen suspended coffee cause problems for a local coffee shop, because it brought in a number of rather obnoxious users that would scare the paying customers and/or frighten the staff. Obnoxious could be drug abusers, rank smelly, threatening or violent (they had to call the police to deal with two different ladies), or just antisocial (one guy stole the cook's mobile). Maybe because it was in a poorer suburb?
Not sure how to resolve that, because the insane and antisocial really deserve a coffee and a break in life. If it were my business, I would need to come up with a work-around so that the business wouldn't be affected so badly.
Apart from that, I love the idea (and have paid for suspended coffees).
> mostly to older people, migrants and the Roma
I think they misinterpreted this part. "The Roma" does not make much sense. I think the person they talked to said "the rom" (that in English may sound like gipsy). They are a very spread ethnicity in Naples (and around Naples) and the majority of them are poor people who panhandle around to make some money.
As an italian I was about to point out the same thing. Thanks for your correction. The roms (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romani_people) are spread through all Europe and are not a Neapolitan only phenomenon. Shame for NYT for not doing their homeworks.
Naples' "suspended coffee" keeps coming up in the news every few months, especially since Italy as a whole is in the grip of a long-running economic crisis that will likely continue for a very long time.
The hard truth is that this sort of individual charity doesn't make anything better in the long run. It's little more than grandstanding, as most charity is.
Originally the recipient of such act was not meant to be someone in need, but simply the customer right after the one 'suspending' the coffee.
It is very hard to really understand the meaning of it without understanding how socially ubiquitous coffee is in Naples. It is always good to start a pleasant evening out with a shared coffee where friends usually fight over who has the honor of paying the bill for everyone. Also, in the city lingo, "let's go have a coffee" can be a clear invite to an easygoing date.
Paying a coffee to a stranger, just a random person passing by, is a way to say "I'm happy and I wish you the same".