The incredible success of coffee shops, these specialist brands that are reinventing coffee

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At Audrey Sauveur's, it's a tailor-made parade of gourmet drinks . "It's a Vanilla Tonka, it's a syrup that we make in-house. We make it with a shot of coffee and oat milk. A little bit of chocolate for the sweet treat," explains the shopkeeper. Here we are in what she calls her coffee shop, "La fiancée." Because it's the one that takes center stage. Accompanied by generous pastries, here, coffee is an art with multiple expressions.

"We make all drinks with black coffee, whether it's espresso, double espresso, Americano, and then all drinks with milk," she lists. From two to seven euros per coffee, she is one of the first in Marseille to have opened this type of establishment where you can eat sweet or savory all day long, far from the traditional bistro, to eat in or take away, like this customer who came to get her favorite coffee. "I had a cortado. It's a coffee that you don't find in all cafes, and I had a small dark chocolate cookie with it," the young woman emphasizes. "There is competition. Before, we were practically alone. Then, two or three opened. And now, there are about ten of us. So, it's very good," points out Audrey Sauveur.

Whether tiled, colorful, on a sidewalk corner, or with a more refined style, coffee shops are popping up all over France. There are more than 3,500 of them, because the French love coffee, and good coffee. "I have two, even three in the morning," confides one woman. Another consumer prefers the sweet version: "I like it when there's caramel in it." A local resident prefers it "very hot, with a touch of milk and a touch of sugar."

On social media, coffee shops are a delight for influencers. They showcase pastries, of course, but also places where it's good to stay, even to work. So, to stand out, more and more coffee shops are now positioning themselves as coffee experts. At the back of his establishment, in this strange machine, Romain Fabry roasts his own coffee just a few meters from customers. "We really have knowledge of the product and this allows us to roast the beans that are truly appropriate for each coffee, which will really allow us to have a drink that we master perfectly," he explains.

A know-how that a customer has been coming to seek for three years, and too bad if the coffee is more expensive: "Paying twice as much for coffee is worth it. Because, again, we're going to drink it more slowly, we're going to enjoy it. It's not an espresso that we take and we grimace a little afterward, then we drink water because it's a bit strong," she believes. In France, a coffee shop opens every week.