What do you bring on your trips to the laser cutter? Passive aggressive foot-tapping? Tears? What about a steaming Americano?

A newly-opened coffee shop in Shibuya is placing its bets on the success of the latter. The Fab Café offers typical coffee shop fair alongside a rentable laser cutter. For the uninitiated, a laser cutter is a machine that reads a 2D drawing and cuts its lines into a piece of material placed in its flat bed. Architects use it to speed up model-making, while fashion designers often use it to cut patterns for clothes (still others use it to give themselves nerdy tattoos).

Customers come armed with vector files and materials, and caffeinate while they cut. According to Spoon & Tamago, prices will seem outrageous to those used to free access in studio: an uninterrupted half-hour on the machine runs about $60, or 5,000 Yen.

Fab Café opened two weeks ago and already has a loyal following on Facebook. And before you call it an unsustainable niche market, keep in mind that Tokyo is a hotbed of successful niche coffee shops.

[Via Spoon & Tamago]

by Kelsey Campbell-Dollaghan

posted in Uncategorized

tagged coffee shop, fab cafe, japan, laser cutter, shibuya, tattoo, tokyo

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