GVQ Time Cafe in Kalamassery, Kochi, is the kind of place that makes you wonder how much more beautiful the pretty white-and-sage green café that sits at the top of a shady slope could get when it rains. We are sitting on the glass-roofed patio under a canopy of trees like the rest of GVQ. “It is beautiful!” Aathira Mohan assures me. This is her and her business partner, Allen K Kurian’s pandemic project.
The concept of a time café is a first for Kochi. It derives from the anti-café movement, which started in Europe. Customers pay for the time they spend in these cafes also called pay-per-minute cafés. So, at GVQ, you pay ₹150 for the first hour and pay ₹1 per minute for the time you spend there with free, unlimited beverages and snacks — black or green tea, black coffee, chilled black coffee, cookies and crepe — thrown in. There are no clocks or timers to keep track of the time a customer spends there. The clock starts ticking when they order/choose their unlimited beverage.
