DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) – Cafés in several Arabian Gulf countries started selling coffee and other cold drinks in baby bottles this month, starting a new trend that has sparked excitement, confusion and backlash.
The craze started at Einstein Cafe, a slick dessert chain with locations across the region, from Dubai to Kuwait to Bahrain. Instead of regular paper cups, the cafe, inspired by photos of trendy-looking bottles shared on social media, decided to serve its thick milky drinks in plastic baby bottles.
While the franchise wasn’t a newcomer to baby-themed products – a milkshake with cerelac, the infant rice cereal, is a long-standing best seller – the unprecedented fervor over the baby bottles was a bit of a shock. All the stress and anxiety about the coronavirus pandemic seems to have prompted some to find an outlet in the strange new craze.
“Everyone wanted to buy it, people were calling all day to tell us they’re coming with their friends, they’re coming with their mom and dad,” Younes Molla, CEO of the Einstein franchise in the UAE, told The Associated. . Busy this week. “After so many months with the pandemic, with all the difficulties, people took pictures, they had fun, they remembered their childhood.”
Lines clogged the Einstein stores across the Gulf. People of all ages flocked to the sidewalks, waiting for their chance to suck coffee and juice from a plastic bottle. Some customers even brought their own baby bottles to other cafes and begged baffled baristas to fill them.
Baby bottle photos filled with colorful kaleidoscopes of drinks drew thousands of likes on Instagram and echoed through the popular social media app TikTok. A cure for the world’s uncertainty? A reaction to a primal instinct? Either way, a trend was born.
Soon, however, online haters took note: The baby bottle drinkers and providers were faced with a barrage of nasty comments.
“People were so angry, they said terrible things, that we were an ‘aeb’ to Islam and Muslim culture,” said Molla, using the Arabic term for shame or dishonor.
Last week, the anger hit the highest levels of government. The Dubai authorities have acted harshly. Inspection teams stormed into pubs where the trend had penetrated and handed out fines.
“Such indiscriminate use of baby bottles is not only contrary to local culture and traditions,” the government statement said, “but mishandling the bottle while filling may also contribute to the spread of COVID-19,” one clear reference to those who take their used bottles to other cafes.
Authorities, the statement added, had been “warned by social media users about the negative practice and its risks.”
There was also backlash from Kuwait, where the government temporarily closed the Einstein Café, and from Bahrain, where the Department of Commerce sent police to cafes armed with live cameras and warned all eateries that serving drinks in baby bottles “is in violation of the law. Bahraini customs and traditions. ”
Oman urged citizens to report sightings of baby bottles to the Consumer Protection Authority hotline. Saudi Twitter users and media personalities condemned the trend in its harshest terms, with popular news website Mujaz al-Akhbar complaining that the “ daughters of the kingdom have suffered a loss of modesty and religion. ”
It is not the first time that guards of local customs in the Arab Gulf states have turned their anger at social media phenomena. Vague laws across the region give authorities widespread power to eradicate public immorality and indecency. For example, last spring, Emirati officers arrested a young expat for posting a video on TikTok in which he sneezed into a banknote accusing him of ‘harming’ the reputation of the UAE and its institutions.