A hatti is a small shop. That is the whole ambition.

ਹੱਟੀ — hatti. The corner shop. The one with a counter, a kettle going, and somebody already leaning on it who has been there twenty minutes longer than they meant to be.

That is the building we are trying to make out of a folding table. Hatti has no lease and no opening hours. It borrows a room — a coffee lab, a brewery, a rooftop — sets up a pot, and for three or four hours that room behaves like a corner shop. People who came for a drink end up staying for the room.

The slogan is where people meet, and it is meant literally. Chai is the reason to be there, not the point of being there. Anyone who has ever been handed a cup by somebody's mum knows the difference.

Chai, community, music

Three things, printed on the artwork for Tower Haus and still true. The chai is cooked in front of you rather than pulled out of a bottle. The community is whoever turns up. The music is not background — there is a speaker at every pop-up, and at Quail State in December there were live DJs on a roof in the cold.

Indian food and sweets come along when they can be carried. Sometimes that is the whole reason people stay for a second cup.

What we will not do

No syrup. No pump bottles. No “chai tea latte”, which is “tea tea latte”. And no pretending that any of this is a ceremony — chai is the most ordinary drink in the world, made several billion times a day, mostly by people not paying it much attention. That is exactly what is good about it.