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It\u2019s around 35 minutes into queueing for ice cream on a quiet street in the 11th arrondissement of Paris that we begin to question our life choices.<\/p>\n
In front of us, a TikToker films content. Behind, an Australian couple in their sixties gently ask their extremely trendy daughter and her extremely trendy boyfriend if there might be another ice cream place nearby?<\/p>\n
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Instafans are flocking to Folderol in Paris.<\/span><\/p>\n They are sent to sit on the curb; the daughter and the boyfriend stick it out, their eyes glittering at the promise of securing a scoop or two from Folderol \u2013 a purveyor of glaces artisanales which has become social media\u2019s sensation du jour.<\/p>\n Folderol is not alone. In wealthy cities the world over, gastronomic \u201cevent queues\u201d are on the rise, snaking outside caf\u00e9s caught in the glare of internet obsession.<\/p>\n TikTok is bringing hordes of people to bakeries like brand-new It\u2019s Bagels in London\u2019s upscale Primrose Hill, where on Saturday mornings you can wait in line for a staggering two-and-a-half hours for a smoked salmon and cream cheese bagel.<\/p>\n You could make your own bagels in that time. But then you\u2019d miss out on the queue. And the queue is half the point.<\/p>\n On TikTok, #queue has more than 200 million views. Standing in line for a new opening, a product launch or (more often than not) a much-hyped sandwich is bread and butter for content creators.<\/p>\n Search It\u2019s Bagels and you\u2019ll find endless videos of people filming themselves approaching the queue, in the queue, getting to the end of the queue, and finally picking up their order and tucking in.<\/p>\n The cafe that notionally started it all was The Breakfast Club, founded in Soho in 2005, where a queue was ubiquitous in the mini-chain\u2019s early years, and it was a novelty to line up (although much sneered-at by the food cognoscenti).<\/p>\n Now it has branches from London and Oxford to Chelmsford and Gatwick, and it\u2019s easier to stroll in for a stack of pancakes or \u201cgreasy spoon\u201d special.<\/p>\n Customers can wait for more than two hours for a bagel on Saturday morning at It\u2019s Bagels in London <\/span><\/p>\n In trendy Hackney, Pophams Bakery regularly crops up on lists of \u201cmost Instagrammable spots in London\u201d.<\/p>\n Owner Ollie Gold has a complicated relationship with the queue that snakes out of the door at weekends as people wait for one of his now legendary pastries (famed for their exquisite lamination, which delivers the double whammy of tasting wonderful while also photographing beautifully). \u201cThe queue was never something that we thought about or thought that would ever happen,\u201d says Gold. It just happened.<\/p>\n Social media hype is \u201ca double-edged sword\u201d, he says. When people post about the queue, it naturally adds to that feeling of \u201cyou need to be in this queue\u201d, which can only be good for business.<\/p>\n But Gold doesn\u2019t actually want people to wait for their pastries. \u201cThe ideal thing is people walk in and they\u2019ve ordered and are out within two minutes. [\u2026] Seeing the queues, it obviously puts some people off. On the other hand, it shows that a place is busy. Why are places usually busy? Because they have a good product.\u201d<\/p>\n The people queuing, then, are the sort who are as taken in by hype as they are the prospect of eating a really good croissant. \u201cSome people love hype and would be up for that queue,\u201d says Gold, who adds that creating a buzz on social media was \u201cabsolutely not something we focused on\u201d when opening. \u201cWe didn\u2019t have a queue for years. It\u2019s years of building up a reputation.\u201d<\/p>\n He is grateful for the attention, though it does irk him slightly when he sees a pastry going cold while someone films it. \u201cWe\u2019re all standing there going, \u2018Please eat it, stop filming it, stop taking photos of it.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n The risk with a viral moment is that it\u2019s inherently fleeting. Hype is a strange thing; more often than not, it\u2019s preceded by the word \u201cover\u201d \u2013 no sooner is something hyped than it becomes overhyped and finished.<\/p>\n Gemma Bell, a hospitality expert with a leading PR company in her name, encourages her clients not to manufacture hype. It\u2019s becoming \u201creally common\u201d, she says, for people to want to actively try to create a viral moment \u2013 food businesses that \u201cwant the whole TikTok hype, that want that immediate millennial, Gen Z [audience] coming to whatever it is they\u2019re doing\u201d.<\/p>\n Diners queue outside indian restaurant Dishoom at Granary Square in the King\u2019s Cross district of London.<\/span>Credit: <\/span>Bloomberg<\/cite><\/p>\n Early hype isn\u2019t necessarily a good thing, she says. \u201cYou need to think about what group of people you\u2019re trying to reach.\u201d Otherwise, \u201cyou\u2019ll get a lot of people coming along just wanting to take a photo and not really understanding what you\u2019re about. You need to ask: \u2018Is that our long-term client? Is that a long-time customer that we want?\u2019 And it might not be.\u201d<\/p>\n Some food brands (typically, she says, bigger high-street businesses) will hire a company to help them generate a \u201cviral moment\u201d. Bell\u2019s concern is always \u201cWhat happens next?\u201d \u201cIt\u2019s a sudden surge,\u201d she says. Your average independent bakery really just wants to become a regular haunt, she says, not a one-hit wonder.<\/p>\n The pasta restaurant Padella, in London\u2019s Borough Market, was among the first to do the event queue. Tim Siadatan opened Padella in 2016 when TikTok was still a twinkle in the Instagram influencer\u2019s eye.<\/p>\n They ran a queue rather than a booking system purely because they were small and wanted a high turnover of covers. \u201cIt quickly became a double-edged sword,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n \u201cIt used to go all the way down the street \u2026 and that caused a lot of hype. We would have people take photos from up in the Shard looking down on people in the queue, which was amazing publicity. The other side of that was \u2013 how do we manage this? Because no one wants to stand in a queue.\u201d<\/p>\n Siadatan would send out nibbles to keep people happy. Then came the complaints. \u201cTransport for London had an issue with it because of where it is in terms of the entrance to the Tube. The local council had an issue because of health and safety. Borough Market had an issue with it \u2013 they\u2019re our landlords. It was blocking other people\u2019s restaurants.\u201d<\/p>\n The restaurant had to employ people to manage the queue. These days, it operates a virtual queue, as more and more restaurants do (even The Breakfast Club). You put your name down on an app and busy yourself with a pint in a nearby pub while you wait.<\/p>\n Shamil Thakrar, co-founder of Dishoom, another early adopter of the queue, says it was never part of the plan. In fact, Thakrar is a little \u201cembarrassed\u201d by it. \u201cI see our job as hospitality. [\u2026] In that sense, the queue is possibly a barrier to hospitality.\u201d<\/p>\n They have found a way around it by making the queue part of the hospitality experience, handing out cups of chai or sherry. If he was opening a new place, would he actively try to cultivate a so-called event queue? \u201cNo. 100 per cent not.\u201d<\/p>\n I visited Folderol, that ice cream and natural wine bar in Paris, in early May, when the hype was beginning to build and this quiet street in the 11th arrondissement was filling up with influencers cradling little bowls of ice cream and glasses of cloudy wine.<\/p>\n After a challenging summer fending off the hordes and their iPhones, the owners, who really just wanted to serve great ice cream (and it is, it should be said, delicious), banned people from sitting on the street.<\/p>\n \u201cThey don\u2019t even taste the ice cream. They just let it pool into a bowl of melting liquid and die in the sun,\u201d she confessed to the New York Times.<\/p>\n Signs read: \u201cNo TikTok.\u201d \u201cBe here to have fun, not to take pictures.\u201d<\/p>\n How long, I wonder, will it take for the signs to appear outside It\u2019s Bagels? \u201cCome for the lox, not for the likes.\u201d<\/p>\n Start the day with a summary of the day\u2019s most important and interesting stories, analysis and insights. Sign up for our Morning Edition newsletter. <\/i><\/b><\/p>\n<\/p>\n
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