Späti

What it means

1. 1.

   The late-opening corner shop — beer, cigarettes, crisps, a bottle opener chained to the counter and often a couple of chairs outside. A Berlin institution, and the reason the city's street-drinking culture works.

2. 2.

   Berlin and Brandenburg usage. Other cities have the shops but not the word: Kiosk in the Ruhr and Cologne, Büdchen in Düsseldorf and Mainz, Trinkhalle in the Ruhr, Spätkauf as the unclipped Berlin original.

Examples with translations

• Ich geh kurz zum Späti, brauchst du was?

  I'm popping to the corner shop, do you need anything?

• Wir haben den halben Abend vorm Späti gesessen.

  We spent half the evening sitting outside the corner shop.

Where it comes from

Clipped from Spätverkaufsstelle, the East German state 'late sales outlet' that stayed open when everything else shut — so the institution is genuinely a GDR inheritance, which is why it is concentrated in the eastern districts. Spätkauf is the post-1990 form and Späti the affectionate clipping of it.

First attested: GDR-era as Spätverkauf; Späti from the 1990s

Other forms

Similar terms:

Spätkauf, Büdchen, Trinkhalle, Kiosk