The Cafes of Cambridge and Somerville Are Recession-Proof


Times are tough, but the cafes of Harvard, Porter, and Davis Squares aren’t feeling the pinch, found a student at Tufts’ Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. Emily Kuross studied the bakeries and cafes of Cambridge and Somerville’s squares for a recession-focused class on qualitative research methods. Though Kuross expected to find the small businesses going belly up, she realized that even among consumers trying to save money, the cafes and bakeries were regarded as a good value for the quality of the product and an inexpensive place to socialize to boot! Furthermore, since the customer base of the squares’ businesses is composed largely of students, who are always broke, yet spendy, the businesses are, to a certain extent, insulated from the recession. People who should be delighted by this news: the folks behind the Harvard Square outpost of cupcakerie Sweet, which opened today.

Friedman, Fletcher Students Tackle Recession [Tufts Daily]

[Photo: Crema Cafe, as bustling as ever. Patrick Haney/Flickr]

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The Cafes of Cambridge and Somerville Are Recession-Proof