From pensions to pastries: Vienna café supports elderly workers

The first thing you notice when you walk into the Vollpension coffee shop in Vienna’s 4th district is the smell. A warm chocolate cake has just come out of the oven, and Elzbieta, one of the bakers, places it next to an array of baked goods, including a lemon sponge cake, pavlova and walnut brownies.

Elzbieta, who’s 68 and originally from Poland, is one of the younger members of the staff. Many of her colleagues are in their 70s and 80s. Eighty-one-year-old Marianne Hoffmann, who has worked at the coffee shop for over a decade, said the people at the cafe have become like a family to her. “I am old, but when I come here, I feel young,” she said.

Vollpension has two definitions in German. It can mean “room and board” and also “full pension.” Moriz Piffl-Percevic, one of the cafe’s co-founders, said when he opened the coffee shop in 2015 that he hadn’t realized the significant pension pay gap that exists in Austria.

“The female pensions are a lot smaller than male pensions, so if you are a retired woman, living alone, and you don’t own a home, then money can be very short,” Piffl-Percevic said.

Boosting the income of elderly workers wasn’t his initial goal. In 2012, while visiting a Viennese coffeehouse with a friend, they ordered a slice of cake. But when they took a bite, he said, they were really disappointed.

“We ended up having a conversation about why cake always tastes so much better when it comes from your auntie, your ma or your grandmother,” he said. “And then we asked ourselves, ‘Why isn’t there a coffee house where grandmothers make the cake?’”

Piffl-Percevic decided to test out the concept with a pop-up cafe involving his own grandmother, Mutter Mayr. It proved a hit, and three years later, he opened Vollpension in one of Vienna’s central districts. The coffee shop resembles a cozy living room with vintage sofas and mismatched armchairs. The bare brick walls are covered in old photos snagged from Vienna’s flea markets.

Around 60% of the staff are over retirement age, and Piffl-Percevic said one of the cafe’s main goals has been to create an intergenerational space where young people can meet and talk with older generations.

When he first left home, he spent most of his time with friends who were his own age. “I realized that I was missing this experience of living under one roof with three different generations and having the exchange of perspectives, thoughts and ideas with people of different ages,” he said.

While all of his bakers are pensioners, some, like Marianne Hoffman, are there primarily to talk to the customers.

Hoffmann retired from her long-time job at a law office in 2014 with no intention of returning to work. But a year into retirement, she found herself feeling isolated. “I came across an article in a magazine about a cafe that was looking for older people to bake and talk to customers.”

Hoffman doesn’t bake anymore, she said. After years of cooking for her family, she said she’s done with that chapter. But she loves to talk. And so she applied.

Hoffman approached a family of three who had just sat down with a plate of warm walnut brownies. They’re from the Upper Rhine Valley in Germany. Klaus, the father, was in Vienna for work. His wife and daughter had joined him for the day and were at the coffee shop on a friend’s recommendation. “It’s a very lovely atmosphere, very heartwarming, very cozy,” Klaus said. “It’s like being at my grandmother’s house. It feels like I’m a small boy again.”

Elzbieta, the baker from Poland, said she works in Vollpension partly because she’s passionate about baking. “My husband could never finish all the cakes I made,” she joked. But she, like other staff members, also comes for the company. “It’s very nice to meet the young baristas and the service staff like Marianne. Social contact is nearly as important as the baking [itself]. It’s good to get out of the house,” she added.

A second Vollpension cafe has now opened in Vienna and Piffl-Percevic said they are in talks to open coffee shops in Graz and Salzburg, and maybe further afield across Europe. Eighty-one-year-old Marianne Hoffman said she can’t predict how long she’ll keep working.

“The contract is minimum for another 10 years, Marianne,” Piffl-Percevic said to her, grinning.

“Who knows?” Hoffman responded. “But I’m healthy and I’m so grateful that I can do this, it just makes me happy every day to come here.”