Butler café

A butler café (Japanese: 執事喫茶, Hepburn: shitsuji kissa) is a subcategory of cosplay restaurant that originated in Japan.

[2][3][4] Women expressed their desire for an establishment where they could seek male companionship in an environment that was less costly than a host club, and more romantic and safe than a nightclub.

[6] Swallowtail is located on Otome Road, a major shopping and cultural destination for female otaku in Ikebukuro, Tokyo,[4] and was founded by management consulting firm Oriental Corporation and the anime and manga goods chain K-Books.

[14] The first butler café in South Korea opened in Yeonnam-dong, Seoul in 2024, and gained popularity through social networking services.

[19] Men employed as butlers can be as young as 18 or as old as 80,[4][19] and receive extended training in tea preparation, etiquette, and restaurant service standards.

[19][4] The training process at Swallowtail takes several months, and requires applicants to pass a test based on hotel restaurant standards.

[19] Job titles for butlers correspond to those of household staff, including "house steward" for the most senior manager and "footman" for servers.

[23] Butler cafés enjoy popularity among fujoshi – a name given to fans of boys' love (BL), a genre of male-male romance fiction aimed at women.

[4][8] In Japan, butler cafés are not specifically aimed at fans of BL, but rather are broadly considered a form of otome muke (乙女向け, lit.

"[2] Claire Gordon of Slate cites the all-Western staff of Butlers Café as functioning as a form of fantasy fulfillment, allowing its largely Japanese clientele to interact with a "hyperbolic, hypermannered extreme" of a stereotypical alluring Western male.