Karma by the Cup

Heroes Café in Neukölln is one of a dozen Berlin cafes participating in a kind of pay-it-forward program called fliegender kaffee, or “flying coffee.”

Anyone who has ever been desperate for a cup of coffee will appreciate a new trend cropping up in Berlin.

Fliegender kaffee translates as “flying coffee,” but it’s also code for “free coffee.” Go into any one of the 12 participating cafes (distinguished by a sticker depicting a cup with wings and a halo), order a flying coffee, and it’s on the house cheap beats studio headphones, no questions asked. And if you’re feeling generous? Buy yourself a coffee, and buy a second coffee to add to the running tab.

It’s no accident the flying cafes, including the organic Café Nährreich in Prenzlauer Berg and the cozy Heroes Café in Neukölln, are clustered in areas of the city where creative professionals tend to hunch over their laptops for hours on end, hustling work. “They have no money one month and the other month, a lot of money,” says the publicist Maik Eimertenbrink, who initiated the concept earlier this month along with the freelance TV producer Tim Hamelberg to keep up the neighborhood spirit. “The month they have money, they can pay for two coffees. But the month they are broke, they drink the free coffee.”

Goldberg Café also offers its patrons “flying coffee.”

Owners of some of the more fancy establishments were concerned that the free coffee would attract the wrong crowd; others liked the idea from the start. Irfan Caglayan who owns the Goldberg Café with his brother, Sadettin, sees it as a way of giving back.

“It’s not about the coffee but sharing with everybody,” said Hamelberg recently over a frothy cappuccino at the Goldberg Café. And then he left without paying.