The ancient art of tasseography, or reading the leftover coffee grounds in the cup, is alive and well in Greece and it is a great entrepreneurial idea to beat the financial crisis.
Or at least that’s what Laura Secorun Palet says in a report in OZY website.
Greek women have their coffee cup “read” for centuries. It is less common nowadays than it was just a few decades ago, but it is a practice many women like, even though today they are less willing to admit it.
However, it was mostly done secretly, because admitting you ‘re going to a coffee reader means that you have problems. Or simply because you don’t want to show you are superstitious and believe in that sort of thing.
The report focuses on a peculiar coffee shop in a poor neighborhood in Athens, where people go to sit and sip their coffee and have their fortune read afterwards. To Flitzani (the cup in Greek) is not just another trendy coffee shop like the ones that pop up like mushrooms every day in the Greek capital. Owner Mary Kontolouri will make you a coffee and then tell you what your future will look like, for 20 euros.
Twenty euros may be a little steep in these hard times, but tasseography used to cost a lot more in the good old days. And what is 20 euros when a woman wants to know if her aloof boyfriend intents to marry her or not?
Tasseography involves emptying the last drops of a cup in a saucer and interpreting the shapes of the coffee remains using a combination of symbol spotting and intuition. According to the report, Kontolouri opened To Flitzani a year ago with the purpose of breaking the taboo of coffee reading and making it fun.
And she has succeeded, as business is very good. Appointments need to be booked in advance, and “the cafe is packed with people downing coffees and asking big life questions: Will my husband leave me? Will my business take off? Traditionally, tasseography has appealed to women, but Kontolouri has many regular male customers, and not only from Athens. People even fly in from Dubai to learn about their fate, and some send their cups by courier,” Laura Secorun Palet says.
In fact business is so good that Kontolouri is to open a new coffee shop in Athens’ richest neighborhood, Kolonaki.
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