Kashmir’s Café Craze

A wave of cafés is reshaping Kashmir’s urban scene, but without data, planning, or innovation, is the bubble about to burst?

- Malik Daniyal

The café scene in Kashmir is booming. With aesthetic interiors and Instagram-worthy corners, these hangouts have shaped urban culture and stir up economic dreams.

But behind the aroma of fresh brews and polished tabletops, a deeper question brews: is this growth sustainable, or are we chasing a bubble?

In the past few years, the valley has seen an explosion of new cafés. Srinagar alone has over 200 cafés operating as of May 2025, a dramatic leap from fewer than 30 a decade ago.

The pace of this growth has been startling.

Many of these ventures are started by young aspirants, professionals returning home, or those keen to cash in on what looks like the trend of the moment.

The logic seems straightforward: “If others are doing it, I can too.” But this thinking is flawed.

Even then, the trend feels particularly amplified in the valley.

The rush to open cafés is often driven more by Instagram aesthetics than sound business sense. Business plans are missing or shallow, focused more on likes than ledgers.

Few café owners seem to consider critical questions: Is there enough demand to justify this many cafés? Is the market already saturated? What happens when the tourist season ends?

Most of these ventures overlook essential factors, like inflation, interest rates, raw material costs, and consumer spending dips at the national or global level.

In a climate where optimism isn’t backed by capital reserves, contingency planning, or supply chain strategy, even a promising boom can quickly spiral into a bust.

That exactly makes this café culture more than just a lifestyle shift. It actually becomes an economic experiment.

And like any experiment without a solid base, it’s at risk of collapsing.