Why there’s never been a better time to quit caffeine

Any time Katherine Howe drank coffee, her side effects would stack up like a midnight WebMD search: jitters, anxiety, acid reflux. But Howe, a 34-year-old model who lives in East Williamsburg, Brooklyn, kept up the habit for years — mostly because she couldn’t find a compelling alternative. “The only caffeine-free thing at the coffee shop was chamomile in a tea bag,” she said. “Even trying to order decaf sometimes, the response would be like, ‘Oh, no, sorry. Why would we do that?’”

Luckily for Howe, the culture has shifted. A renewed focus on health has inspired many people to examine their relationship with coffee and, more specifically, caffeine, mirroring changes in alcohol consumption. And the impulse to meet and linger at cafes has returned to, if not exceeded, pre-COVID-lockdown levels.

“People love their third spaces, and more and more they want those spaces to adapt to how they want to feel in a given moment,” said Sara Gibson, an owner of Sightseer Coffee in Austin, Texas. “Sometimes that’s caffeinated, and sometimes it’s not.”

Many coffee shops across the United States have recently expanded their low- and no-caffeine beverage options, and the offerings are a far cry from dusty tea bags and rewarmed decaf. Instead, these drinks are just as thoughtful and social-media-ready as their stimulating counterparts, appealing to a wider range of dedicated consumers.

Matcha’s whirlwind rise and subsequent shortages can be credited, in part, to a desire for a gentler form of caffeine, sourced and prepared with care. Now, “decaf desirability” is peaking, said Haile Thomas, an owner of the cafe Matcha Thomas in Beacon, New York. “Even people who have an affinity for caffeinated drinks, when they see that we’re trying to creatively approach decaf options, are intrigued.”

Building an attractive menu of low- and no-caffeine drinks can be a challenge. Terrible coffee hits just as hard as the fancy stuff, but low-caf alternatives don’t have the high to hide behind. To succeed, they must over-index in other areas (flavour, ingredient quality, delight, aesthetics).

Sightseer, a roasting company with a cafe, holds the non-coffee side of its menu to the same standards as its in-house beans. “Our goal is to start with base offerings that taste great on their own, then build drink specials that enhance their flavours,” Gibson said.

Janet Lee, a managing partner of the Korean American cafe Sohn in San Francisco, thinks about low- and no-caffeine offerings as a matter of accessibility. “It’s kind of like when a vegan goes to a restaurant and all they can have is a salad,” she said. “People who are sensitive to caffeine should also have the option to get a cream top or a perilla espresso tonic.”

Sohn, which has been open for just three months, is among a wave of Asian and Middle Eastern cafes opening around the country that are inherently friendly to decaf drinkers. Through these shops, options like barley tea, Japanese sobacha, Turkish salep, Yemeni qishr and Kurdish qezwan have become more widely available, enticing those who might have otherwise never strayed from java.

At DAE, a Brooklyn cafe with Korean and Japanese influences on its menu, moody-hued mugwort lattes hit the bar alongside flat whites and pour-overs. “Noncaffeinated drinks have always been popular in Asia,” said Amy Zou, events director at DAE. Their growing traction in the United States, she said, stems from a Western instinct to “reach for culturally new experiences.”

One of the most popular orders at DAE is the low-caf drink of the moment: hojicha, a Japanese green tea often ground into a powder and prepared like matcha. Earthy and toasty with a subtle chocolate flavor, hojicha is roasted over charcoal rather than steamed, which accounts for its rich color and lower caffeine content (closer to a cup of decaf coffee than matcha).

Like its verdant sister, hojicha is increasingly available at Japanese and non-Japanese cafes alike, not only in drinks, but also in baked goods and ice cream. In April, Matcha Thomas temporarily switched its entire menu to hojicha drinks in an effort to ride out a matcha shortage. “We learned how low-caf-curious many consumers are,” Thomas said. “It felt like they were able to access something that fit their needs a bit more. For people who would visit us in the evening, hojicha felt like such a great option.”

Low- and no-caffeine drinks also provide cafes with fertile ground for experimentation. “There’s a lot of fusion and play that can happen in this space as demand rises,” Thomas said. “There isn’t as much structure or expectation as to how a decaf drink needs to be prepared.” She leans on ginger, elderberry, licorice, chamomile, lavender and tulsi, especially “right now with cold and flu season.” At Sightseer, the team “has been experimenting with rooibos tea and a piloncillo simple syrup with citrus zest,” Gibson said. “Maybe it’ll make its way onto our winter menu.”

And of course, there’s always decaf. Some cafes have started earnestly investing in their decaf game to the thrill of caffeine-cautious (but coffee-loving) consumers. “Decaf has always been overlooked, but we are sourcing really good beans,” Lee said of the Colombian decaf at Sohn. “It was an easy option for us to add, and we didn’t have to compromise on quality or taste.”

John Smith, a 38-year-old content manager who avoids caffeine for health reasons, is taking advantage of the shift. “I still get the ritual of the tiny espresso cup and the complex taste without all the side effects,” he said. In San Diego, where he lives, he looks out for Swiss Water beans, which are stripped of their caffeine through water instead of chemical solvents.

Despite growing interest in alternatives, customers and cafe owners agree: Caffeine isn’t going anywhere. Instead, cafe owners said that drinkers want to split the difference by balancing morning cold brews with afternoon turmeric lattes.

For many, this move is as much about a coffee shop’s role in their daily lives as it is the drinks themselves. After 1 p.m., orders of hojicha and decaf espresso spike at Sohn. “We’ve noticed people coming in to just unwind,” Lee said. “It’s definitely becoming more of a ritual than an errand.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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