Harmonize Cafe, which took over the site where Wander used to be, is a socially conscious cafe and community music venue
Opened at the end of February on Stoke Newington High Street, Harmonize Cafe is a community venue that serves a range of snacks (chocolates, crisps, biscuits and so on), teas, coffees and cold drinks like kombucha, wine, beer and cider, and hosts community lunches, music tuition, and live music events with chef-cooked meals. It comes from the same team behind World Harmony Orchestra, a socio-musical enterprise founded in 2016 with the idea of connecting people through music. As well as supporting charitable causes, the orchestra performed socially-distanced concerts for isolated people during the pandemic.
The thing that’s caught our eye though is the sliding pricing scale that the cafe operates. According to signs tacked up in the window, there are three colour-coded levels of pricing set in relation to guests’ wealth, health and social situation – punters are asked to consider their income, assets, expenses, housing situation, the state of their social life, and mental and physical health when paying for food or drinks.
Fuchsia pricing is the most expensive and is for people who would answer good or very good to the above; Turquoise is the mid-range, and is for people who would say average (your mental health may be good but your wealth situation may be bad for example); and Copper, the cheapest pricing, would be for those who deem their health, wealth and social life to be bad. That means a bag of Boundless chipotle chips or a flat white is £1 for Copper, £2 for Turquoise and £4 for Fuchsia, and a small glass of wine (red, white or rosé) is £1.75 for Copper, £3.50 for Turquoise, and £7 for Fuchsia.
Speaking about the pricing structure, Harmonize Cafe founder Romain Malan said, “Economic inequality in today’s society is worsening, and still, business prices are spiralling upwards in a dangerous way, making more and more people unable to access their daily needs. As a result of this vicious circle, businesses see their number of customers dramatically decrease and use the only remedy they know: increase their prices even more, and therefore make the situation even worse and out of control.
“Sliding scale pricing seems to be the only way for businesses to keep all the social classes from their local community on board. I strongly encourage them to use that method or at least to try it out. We don’t see other businesses as competitors but potential collaborators in our social mission. So the more of them use a sliding scale, the better it is for our society. Yes, it is a very bold initiative and it certainly requires a huge amount of trust, but that trust itself and care for each other are the cement on which a fairer society can be reinvented.”
Though the cafe has only been open a short amount of time and that it’s “probably too soon to see if this system will be sustainable”, Romain has said that customers have been supportive of the pricing structure so far.
Stay in the loop…
Sign up to our drops & get us in your inbox.
We’ll be in your inbox every Wednesday at 11:30am.
Put the kettle on!
Key Information
Address | 214 Stoke Newington High Street, N16 7HU
For more information | harmonizecafe.london