We are not restaurant critics but parents who love good coffee. So our reviews mainly answer one question: can we enjoy a really good coffee here, relaxed, with our kids?
Every place on our site is a recommendation
We only write about places we have been to and would happily go back to, or places we have researched and want to visit ourselves as soon as we can.
So the family check score is not a grade for the place. It only shows how well it works with young children. A café with 2.5 out of 5 might have no changing table or little room for a pram. We still recommend it, and you know in advance what to expect.
What we look at
- Coffee quality: how do the espresso and cappuccino taste? Where do the beans come from, do they roast their own, is there decaf?
- Kids welcome: how do the staff react to children? Do we feel welcome as a family, or merely tolerated?
- Access and space: steps at the entrance, side entrances, space between tables and room for a (double) pram.
- Facilities: high chair, changing table or changing room, toilet, play corner.
- Food for kids: is there something children like to eat, and does it come quickly?
- Outdoor seating: a Schanigarten or terrace – and whether you can sit there without smoke.
- Waiting and bustle: noise level, waiting times and whether there is a quieter corner.
- Practical info: bookings, opening hours, public transport and what’s nearby – a park, a playground.
The family check
Every review starts with the “At a glance” box. It contains our family check: eight points we check the same way at every place, so you can compare them.
- Pram access: step-free or a single step at most (a side entrance counts too)
- Room for the pram
- High chair
- Changing table
- Decaf coffee – important during pregnancy and breastfeeding
- Playground nearby (at most about 5 minutes on foot)
- Smoke-free outdoor seating
A “yes” earns one point, “partly” half a point and “no” none. Two criteria count only half: decaf coffee – nice to have, but less decisive for a relaxed visit with kids – and a playground nearby, since almost every place in Vienna has one within walking distance. Anything we could not check or find out is marked with a question mark and left out. If a place has no outdoor seating, that criterion does not count either. To make all places comparable, we convert the result to a scale from 0 to 5: a place that meets every criterion we checked gets 5 out of 5 – however many criteria we could check. The number still open is shown below the card. Below the family check you’ll find the address, website, a link to the current Google reviews and when we visited.
On top of that there are two bonus criteria. They add points if a place has them and cost nothing if it doesn’t, so the family check only lists them when a place meets them:
- Play corner inside: it often lets you enjoy your coffee far more relaxed. But most good cafés don’t have one, and we are not a guide to kids’ cafés. If a review doesn’t mention a play corner, there isn’t one.
- Third-wave coffee: our personal coffee pick. We only give it if one of us has had the coffee there and particularly enjoyed it. That is a matter of taste: we are not professional tasters, and on another day or with another bean it may be different. Every other point in the family check is based on facts you can check.
A bonus only counts if it improves the result. There is no score above 5 out of 5.
Visited or researched
With three kids and jobs, we can’t visit as many places as there are good cafés in Vienna. To give you more choice anyway, we have two kinds of entries – and each one says which it is:
- Checked on site: we have been there with our kids. Only these places get a full review with our impressions and our own photos.
- Not visited yet: we have researched these places. The family check is based on what the venue tells us – we ask by email or phone about steps, high chairs, changing tables and outdoor seating – and on our own research, such as the venue’s photos and the City of Vienna’s playground data. Each entry says when we collected the information. If we have been there without the kids, say for a coffee, it says “Not visited with our kids yet”.
For researched places we don’t describe experiences and don’t judge taste or atmosphere – that is only possible on site. The one exception is our coffee pick, if one of us has already had a coffee there. We do read online guest reviews, but only pass on what several guests mention independently, and we say that these are other guests’ impressions. The family check is calculated the same way as for places we visited, so you can compare them – but we only show a score once at least five of the seven points are confirmed. Once we have been there ourselves, the entry becomes a proper review.
We only include a researched café if everything points to really good coffee – for example beans from a specialty roaster, in-house roasting or trained baristas.
Why smoke-free outdoor seating counts
Since November 2019, smoking has been banned inside Austrian cafés and restaurants – but not in the Schanigarten, the outdoor seating area. For families with young children and for pregnant women, that means: if you sit outside, you almost always sit in smoke. We don’t think it has to be that way.
That’s why smoke-free outdoor seating is a point of its own in our check. We know that hardly any place meets it today – but for every place we show how many points it would have with a smoke-free terrace. A place also gets the full point if, next to a smoking section, it has a genuine non-smoking area that no smoke drifts into. More on this in Smoke-free patios.
Outings: the heart rating
For outings, we don’t rate the facilities but how much we love going. Age, changing table, food and price are listed without points in the “At a glance” box. The hearts come from four questions, each rated from 1 to 5:
- Kids’ enthusiasm: Do the kids light up, stay engaged and want to go back?
- Parents’ enjoyment: Do we enjoy the day ourselves, too?
- Works for the whole family: Does it suit children of different ages at the same time?
- Worth the effort: Are getting there, planning and price in good proportion to the experience?
We give one shared score per question, and the hearts show the average. Outings we go back to again and again also get the “Favourite” badge. Anything we have only researched and not tried ourselves gets no hearts. You can find all outings under Things to Do with Kids in Vienna.
Our rules
- For every place we say whether we have been there ourselves. Impressions and experiences only come from places we have visited.
- We state the date of our visit – for researched places, when we collected the information. Facilities and menus change, so we update older reviews regularly.
- If we are invited or get something for free, the article says so. More in How we fund this site.
- Every place we mention is a recommendation. Where a place falls short for families, we still say so openly, so you know what to expect.
You’ll find every place we have visited in our guide to family-friendly cafés in Vienna. Is something no longer up to date? Let us know via our contact form.