Cafe culture in India is stretching the day into the night

It’s 6 pm on a regular day. A sandwich shop in a neighbourhood market in New Delhi switches off its digital signage, wrapping up the remains of the day. The shutters of Savage Sandwich Shop come down, but the kitchen isn’t done for the day. The space takes a pause, then rearranges itself. In cities across the country, versions of this transformation are becoming part of cafe culture in India. Instead, dark grey curtains slide over the glass windows where sunlight had been pouring in since 11 am. 

Inside, the seating is rearranged. The staff’s uniform changes. So does the cutlery. The music rises slightly in volume, old school tracks engineered for millennial nostalgia start playing. The in-house ferments on display disappear. Spirits take their place. The kitchen shutter drops. Prep begins for Thai small plates, the backbone  of the evening menu. At 7 pm, the digital signage flickers on, and now reads ‘Painkiller’, the bar the sandwich shop transforms into every day.

Versions of this reset are appearing across cafe culture in India, where restaurants are no longer fixed identities but adaptive environments.

How cafe culture in India reflects changing eating habits

Two different formats allow spaces to serve entirely different rhythms: a post-workout and WFH crowd through the day, and drinkers stepping out in the evening. The menus follow this shift. 

Hanisha Singh, chef and co-founder, Savage Sandwich Shop and Painkiller, describes the bar less as a list of drinks and more as emotional repair. “The menu is crafted in such a way that it treats the drinks like medicine for things you’ve gone through during the day. There’s Pear and Butterscotch, Ivy Drip Twist.” Sandwiches anchor the all-day food philosophy, built for speed and fuel. By evening, indulgence replaces efficiency. “Today’s diners don’t want to have the same meal every time they go out,” adds Singh.  

“Indians don’t eat the same way throughout the day,” says Sudhiksha Kaushik Anantharamu, co-founder, Circa 11 in Bengaluru. “Even within a single group, people often want different things.” That appetite for variation is reshaping cafe culture in India. By day, the menu at Circa 11 reads like a bistro, comprising coffee and simple plates. At 7 pm, it pivots into a technique-driven bar and dining room. The music follows that shift, moving from instrumental jazz and bossa to heavier, groove-led rhythm. Menus rotate every 45–50 days to match a clientele that expects change as part of the experience. 

Why hybrid cafes are reshaping restaurant economics in India

Beyond cultural relevance, the hybrid model reflects hard economics shaping restaurant trends in India. At New Delhi’s Genre, the ground floor operates as a coffee-led café while upper floors largely house dining. Brunch ends at 4 pm. By 7 pm, the lighting softens, candles appear, and playlists move from RnB to vinyl jazz.

“If I'm paying rent for the building, I should utilise all three floors,” says Genre’s  co-founder Sahil Marwaha.  “I make more money on alcohol. A person will get two coffees, but have three-four drinks. Or, order a drink instead of that third coffee. The transition helps increase people’s spending in different aspects of the space as well.” Behind the aesthetic shift is a rent calculation. Hybrid spaces stretch square footage across time instead of relying on a single rush hour. 

“Had I opened Painkiller as an all-day bar, we wouldn’t have had an afternoon crowd. No one is stepping out for a drink in the afternoon. Rentals don’t permit sustaining that,” says Singh.  The sandwich shop began as a workaround. Liquor licences take time. “Once we had everything in place it didn’t make sense to not utilise the space for the month of waiting,” says Singh. The team even considered leasing it out during the day.

Splitting the rent is another option: In Goa, JUNA, an evening bar, runs as a coffee space called Nada during the day–two different brands that run the space and pay rent. 

Day businesses still carry social weight, but function more as meeting points. “Especially in New Delhi, a city with a lot more entrepreneurs who don’t always have meetings in office spaces,” adds Singh. Running both models takes more staff and coordination. Genre hired staff for a second shift once the bar opened. Coffee machines demand early mornings that are incompatible with late-night service.

Mon Petit Frère in Goa’s Colva expanded staffing when it evolved from a brunch-led café   to a bar after six years. Co-founder Raymond Rodrigues notes that while cafés are cheaper to start, bars generate higher margins. “A person would probably spend about ₹500-600 on breakfast and a coffee–a quick service that lasts about 30-45 minutes. At night, customers will sit down, order more things, share plates, and get two drinks each or more. You are able to make more margins on your cocktails,” explains Rodrigues.

Why the branding of hybrid spaces can confuse customers

Greater margins are one reason the country saw a rise in small speakeasies, often hidden behind a secret pathway that signal exclusivity. 

“Speakeasies work economically because they’re tightly controlled environments—limited seating, high per-cover spends, focused menus, and a premium attached to exclusivity. However, they’re not universally scalable,” says Rakshit Sharma, co-founder, The Foundry Nagoa in Goa. “They rely heavily on location, narrative, and a specific audience willing to pay for that experience.

But exclusivity is no longer the only aspiration shaping the nightlife culture in India. Café-to-bar spaces align with the country’s expanding appetite for community spaces—venues people visit multiple times a day rather than once a week.

“In theory, a split menu and environment should be more economically viable, because you're allowing the space to function more meaningfully across more hours of the day. But in practice, it can be the opposite initially because when the model is new and nuanced, people can misinterpret it. Some expect ours to be an all-day cafe experience to carry through unchanged into the evening. A shapeshifting space requires a certain amount of education and repetition,” says Anantharamu. 

Marwaha admits it was difficult to establish Genre as a bar after it gained popularity as a breakfast and coffee space. “We even had to stop all social media posts apart from ones focusing on cocktails and the bar. If I ever do a coffee-to-cocktail place again, I will wait till I can start both spaces together despite financial loss. Communicating [to the customers] is too difficult,” he says. 

Rodrigues continues to face the same friction at Mon Petit Frère, with customers asking for brunch at 8 pm, even though the establishment stops serving it at 4 pm. “It’s been difficult to get people to acknowledge us as a bar as well,” he says.

If hybrid spaces succeed, it’s because both identities stand independently. In an era where single-concept restaurants outperform multi-cuisine menus, clarity matters.  

“Single-cuisine restaurants do better when there’s clarity and conviction behind them. Multi-cuisine spaces can work if they’re unified by technique, sourcing, or philosophy rather than geography. The problem isn’t variety; it’s lack of identity,” says Himanish Sidhu, co-founder, The Foundry Nagoa, which focuses on their decor to change the space. The Foundry physically transforms through design. A suspended iron platform drops at night to hold DJ decks. Daytime remains mellow. The architecture itself performs the shift. “It only works if the transitions feel intentional,” adds Sidhu.

Why social spaces in India are becoming flexible

At Dumbo Deli in New Delhi, the shift from slow-poured coffee to evening cocktails came from watching how customers move through the day. “The way people socialise has changed. There’s no rigid box anymore—someone can come for coffee at noon, join friends for a sandwich at 3 pm, and stay for drinks by 7 pm. Especially in cities, people want flexible spaces where they can do all three,” says Prateek Gupta, restaurateur and co-founder, Dumbo Deli. Such fluid schedules are changing how Indian cafes hold multiple versions of the day.

“Spaces that go from being a cafe to a bar also offer inclusivity. It doesn't ask everyone to eat and drink the same way at the same time. It lets people participate in their own space, which feels far more natural for how people socialise today,” adds Anantharamu. 

Cafes to bars to midnight feasts: An inclusive space for communities to gather

“It’s also about finding comfort in a space. People don’t want to be home when they WFH, they want a neighborhood space for decent coffee in the morning and a drink at night,” says Marwaha, describing the kind of spaces he gravitates toward. 

These are spaces designed to operate at full capacity across the day, each hour carrying a different purpose. 

This logic shaped Rodrigues’ decision to open Mon Petit Frère as a cafe-bar instead of a drinking tavern in south Goa “Taverns are not community spaces. They are bar-powered and loud, not a place people visit multiple times a day—that’s the essence of how little communities of regulars are formed,” says Rodrigues.  

Across cities in India, the appeal is less about novelty than about belonging. Familiarity becomes the product. In India, diners increasingly seek spaces that feel dependable. “Spaces become familiar quickly, making customers return if the place consistently delivers. There’s comfort in knowing that your last drink is at a place you trust—where the food always hits, the energy feels right, and you leave feeling better than when you walked in. That sense of community, of being part of something familiar yet evolving, is a big reason why the café-to-bar format works,” adds Sharma. 

The hybrid model isn’t new. Restaurateur Riyaaz Amlani’s Social Offline helped popularise it in the mid-2010s, merging cafe, co-working hub, and bar into a single address. antiSOCIAL extended that logic into performance nightlife, though its after-hours ambitions ran into regulatory limits. 

What’s changing now is the timeline. Operators are stretching the concept deeper into the night, aligning with nightlife culture and work schedules that no longer follow clean endings. “Night shifts improve overall efficiency by extending meaningful service hours without increasing fixed costs. Late-night guests typically order fewer dishes but more drinks, resulting in stronger per-cover economics,” says Tanveer Kwatra, founder of GRAMMIE in New Delhi, which has also introduced a midnight small-plates menu in response to irregular work hours. 

That pressure is visible elsewhere.  Radhika Khandelwal extended brunch hours at Trouble Trouble in New Delhi after customers pushed against the 4 pm cutoff. She later introduced a monthly unlimited midnight brunch. “Brunch or eggs is something you can have at any time of the day. It’s a financial decision because it makes money,” says Khandelwal. 

“The midnight brunch brings back the focus on food from cocktails after hours via dishes such as Eggs Benedict and Chicken with Waffles and a cocktail menu that mirrors a brunch soiree,” she adds, describing an after-party crowd that prefers to linger. If sober coffee raves can fill mornings, midnight brunches are simply the same instinct stretched. Spaces are no longer fixed by the clock—they follow the mood of the people that frequent them.