I was responding to someone suggesting that increased density would help with retail profitability.
If we were ro make housing more dense but use the extra space as countryside that's not going to provide any more customers within the catchment area of the OP's coffee shop, is it?
If your current area has 400 residents but you can still easily walk to open fields, increasing that to 1200 residents in the same area would triple potential coffee customers while maintaining the same access to countryside.
Sure! The discussion was about enjoying small independent coffee shops, and how to run one profitably, so my description of "better" is w.r.t. that issue - for persons who want to run such a coffee shop, or who want to visit one. The identified issue is that per-purchase margins are fairly small, and to sustain a business it requires a lot of these small purchases. As property (mortgage/rental) costs are also high, having a small space is also important. So to get a lot of customers despite being a small space, you want to be either near a natural attraction (park, beach, etc), or near a lot of people (office building, metro station). Density helps with the latter.
> I happen to live in a low-density part of the world. It has its downsides, but on the plus side, from my home I can walk to open countryside in pretty much any direction in a few minutes.
And how many independent coffee shops can you walk to in a couple minutes?
I'd love to hear more about this, and how one defines "better", because it doesn't sound like this is going to work for everyone.
Full disclosure: I've spent the pandemic being amazingly grateful that - by chance - I happen to live in a low-density part of the world. It has its downsides, but on the plus side, from my home I can walk to open countryside in pretty much any direction in a few minutes.