Opera and Plastic Chairs: Aida, the best chain in the world

I'm generally really opposed to chains. I think they sap a lot of joy out of cities, make things too predictable and make it harder for independent businesses to survive. One of the things I liked about Vienna is that, when it comes to food, the city centre isn't dominated by chains but rather by atmospheric individual coffee shops.

...and yet for some reason I loved Aida, Vienna's ultra kitschy chain of cake and coffee shops. It's so sweet and cake coloured that it's actually ridiculous, and all the interiors are ultra retro and the cupcakes are halfway between cute and 'is that actually just a pile of cream and food dye?'




There's also lots of neon, and I really love neon.

Aida could be described as the opposite of a dental surgery. It's somewhat akin to an old airline advertisement, except less obviously sexist as the men wear the same pink shirts as the women and also bring you cake. Nobody smiles, which is apparently traditional in Viennese cafes but is hilarious in the context of such a sweet place.

I don't speak German, but I (with google translate) nonetheless deciphered some of the history of Aida, because this felt like a necessary homage to the chain's delightful aesthetic, all 1960s and 70s and pink and brown and coated in laminex.

Aida was opened in 1925 (one of the best years for aesthetics!) by the 'zuckerbäckermeister' (literally 'sugar baker master' which is quite the job description) Josef Prousek. 

The story behind the name is quite sweet, and amusingly Viennese. Prousek loved opera, particularly Verdi and Puccini, and initially couldn't decide between 'Aida' and 'Tosca'. He went for Aida as it had been, in 1924, performed on a football field in Vienna's first open air opera performance (though personally I think Tosca would have been an amazing name). I love that it's named after an opera anyway; it's so at odds with plastic furniture.

There were eleven Aida cafes by 1940, all of which were destroyed in air raids during World War II.

If these cups had been for sale, I would have bought one.

But in 1948, Aida reopened with Austria's first espresso machine! 

Aida were ahead of the times both in being a chain and in having an espresso machine, but the main reason they bounced back and became so successful after the war was that they set themselves apart from Vienna's older cafes, which after the war must have seemed stuck in a nineteenth century which jarred with the realities of postwar Europe.

Until the 1980s, Aida's architecture and interior designer was Rudolf Vorderegger, who I can unfortunately find almost no information about! He doesn't even have a wikipedia page in German... but it seems he was partially responsible for Aida's aesthetic. If anyone can point me in the direction of more information/images related to Vorderegger I'd really be interested.

Some elements of the Aida design are inexplicable.

Aida's sixties/seventies aesthetic has now, obviously, dated, which is part of the charm, but interesting in the context of the modernity that made them stand out in the postwar period. Aida haven't continued consumer revolutions but rather have carved their own niche and embraced an aesthetic that isn't all that common at this point in time. Because of this, Aida remain distinct from the nineteenth century cafes and yet also different from chains like McDonalds (which was started in the 1940s, but doesn't retain a similar spirit, except at one branch) or Starbucks, the depressingly of-our-time symbols of globalisation and loss of place.

The wikipedia article on Aida says some things which don't resonate with my own (brief) experiences of the cafe, noting that all staff are female, which definitely wasn't true of the Aida I went to, and that most customers are also female. I liked that there were men of all ages, some in groups and some alone, in the pink surrounds of Aida. I liked that the use of pink wasn't gendered or interpreted as such, but instead was more about mirroring the cakes for sale than playing into existing ideas on gender.

But possibly it doesn't play out this way everywhere, and having spent a week in Vienna without the ability to really speak German means I'm probably not qualified to comment.

Aida also have their own orchard somewhere for growing fruit to make jams and cakes with, and a factory they've had since 1976. I was anxious to see if the aesthetic was continued at the factory, so I looked it up on google streetview (Schönthalergasse 1, Floridsdorf 1210), and there is a giant pink horse outside!
I should probably note that if I lived in Vienna I'd probably grow to resent Aida quickly, much as I loved Pret a Manger on my first visit to London but was delighted to learn the other day that somebody had bought the naming rights for Australia specifically to ensure the chain couldn't easily open branches there.


I drank coffee at Aida twice, at two different branches. After that, I sort of found cultish devotion to the brand seemed silly, yet still really loved looking at the pink signs, lit windows and ridiculous cakes... and made a point of stopping to look at every Aida I passed... and I only passed four in a week. Aida isn't quite the Starbucks of the seventies.