Maid cafés (メイド喫茶 / メイドカフェ Meido kissa / Meido kafe) are a subcategory of cosplay restaurants found predominantly in Japan. In these cafés, servers are dressed in maid & butler costumes and cater to their guests.
The maid costume varies from café to café but most are based upon the costume of French Maids, often composed of a dress, a petticoat, a pinafore, a matching hair accessory (such as a frill or a bow), and stockings. Servers in maid cafés are often chosen on the basis of their appearance; most are young, attractive and innocent-looking men and women. Some maid cafés also have cross-dressing males as maids.
Maid cafés were originally designed primarily to cater to the fantasies of male otaku, fans of anime, manga, and video games. Important to the otaku attraction to maid cafés is the Japanese concept of moe, which generally describes a love for anime, manga or video game characters. More specifically, moe refers to adoration for young or innocent-looking female characters. Today, the maid café phenomenon attracts more than just male otaku, but also couples, tourists, and women.
What is a Maid Café?
To start off, we are a volunteer pop-up maid cafe for hire (a nonprofit organization). Recently we are trying to use most of our proceeds to be donated back to the community such as after school programs, local animal shelters, etc. The events we appear at host us and we provide the maid cafe experience. In short, this is not a "paying job." When we have a café setup available, we will have a host or hostess at the door who will be taking note of your reservation. You can tell the one taking your reservation that you would like to specially request a specific maid or butler of your choice.
Party guests can range from a single person to a max of eight people. Tables that are seating a party of eight requires two servers to entertain that many guests at one time. When your party is called, the host will collect your entry fee and your server will guide you to your designated table. Our entry fee reflects on room rental from the convention hosts. Table sessions can go from thirty minutes to forty-five minutes long depending on how backed up the wait list is.
For fun, we have a collection of party games for our guests to enjoy. From card games like Uno, to interactive games like Jenga, to silly guessing games like Headbanz. Our staff members like to get to know their guests at their table so we try to encourage conversation! In the end, it is amazing when people have such a great time that they become regulars at our café events!
At Kinu Café
