Smelling the coffee: By Neil Fredrik Jensen

I WALKED from one end of Hitchin town centre to the other and I counted dozens of places where I could buy a cup of coffee or get a haircut.

I have often wondered how these establishments make money when they have so many alternatives in a relatively small town.

We all need a haircut, the lockdown proved that, but coffee?

Surely that's a discretionary purchase that really only thrives when times are good?

As someone who has lived in Hitchin for more than three decades, I often think the local service economy is a little unbalanced and exposed to "concentration risk".

The town seems saturated with similar outlets all fighting for virtually the same audience. There's no doubt that opening a coffee bar taps into the zeitgeist - sipping a capo or a latte is a popular, trendy thing these days and to some extent has replaced the "meet you at the pub" aspect of daily life for many.

There's something quintessentially metropolitan about it and having retired from my career in the City, one of the things I miss is good quality [admittedly overpriced] coffee.

Fortunately, Hitchin has a few coffee shops that compare very favourably with the best of Shoreditch, Spitalfields and Soho.

I like nothing more than having a flat white in one of my favourite coffee houses in Hitchin, something I have sorely missed in this crisis.

We also love to capture the vibe of Paris, Vienna or Milan in sitting outside in pavement cafes, looking across a plaza or two. Great idea, I do it often, but do we need traffic to chug past as we slurp our espresso?

Lockdown surely showed that pedestrianised town centres are the way ahead, especially for any town that relies on its service industry.

Hitchin could benefit from making the outdoor experience more accessible, not to mention more aesthetic, on a permanent basis. It's arguably what people want but our pavements are often too narrow for dining al fresco.

I know that in some countries, town centre management tries to avoid an over-concentration of one type of business in order to maintain competitiveness and also to give business owners a chance to be profitable.

We see so many businesses open and close in a narrow timeframe in Britain as profit margins are being squeezed all the time by rents and declining footfall.

Again, the crisis we are still trying to scramble out from has told us many businesses are being run on a hand-to-mouth basis and they are one quarter away from disaster.

If you've got a business in a town with 50 rivals selling a similar product, how can you possibly prosper?

How can people make a decent living when the consumer has so much choice around one basic experience?

In order to survive, surely you have to sell what people need rather than what they want? Alternatively, the "experience" has to be authentic and able to differentiate itself.

It's not the product you're selling that is always the key, it's what goes with it – hence, a shop that sells "lifestyle" and customer care while speaking to current consumer behaviours will be able to set itself apart from its rivals.

Hitchin claims to have a compelling mix of the small, independent shops and some household names. It's certainly one of the most delightful and easy-going towns north of London and given the amount of travelling I do in Britain and abroad, I am always glad to return home.

My wife and I have thought of moving more than once but we came to realise that we already live in a sought-after area, so why go elsewhere? In the post-pandemic world, we are lucky to seek refuge in a town like Hitchin.

In an economic downturn, and we are about to experience the worst of times, possibly more harrowing than the 2008-09 economic crisis, the "frilly bits" of life inevitably get neglected.

Even coffee becomes a non-essential when thousands of jobs are lost and haircuts become less frequent. It is going to be a case of "use it or lose it".

One of the saddest sights in any town centre is a boarded-up shop, the calling card of decay and decline. The last coupe of years has severely tested just how robust Hitchin's service economy really is, but you know, we have been here before.

Life does find a way of overcoming major obstacles.