Why creators and cafés like Mami Bombay, Mokai, and The Croffle Guys are betting big on episodic content

You can tell the internet has reached a new stage of collapse when a coffee shop’s Instagram feed feels more coherent than most streaming platforms in our generation. One day, you’re scrolling past an AI-generated image by the White House of President Donald Trump as a muscular Jedi from Star Wars, and the next thing you’re watching is a barista in Brooklyn commit to a three-episode arc about a broken milk frother. And somehow, that tiny arc feels more grounded than half the things pushed at you by the algorithm.

After years of our feeds all over the internet, stuffed with hyper-curated content, recycled trends, and captions that read as a committee of bots crowdsourced them, these low-stakes mini-series feel like a relief. Not because they are clever in a cinematic sense, but because they remind you that someone real is behind the camera, someone who probably clocked out five minutes after filming. 

What’s even more fun is how fast everyone is jumping on this bandwagon. Cafes, restaurants, jewellery and fashion labels, niche bakeries, you name it, are suddenly producing content with more character development than half of the shows on Netflix. And people (including me) eat it up.

Gen Z, fried by overstimulation and allergic to anything that smells like a campaign, seems to prefer small stories that unfold without any polish or pressure. They want smaller narratives that can flow without that constant feeling of being overwhelmed. These short arcs help them form quick, low-effort connections with the people who appear in these videos.

Take, for instance, Suraksha at Mokai throwing shade at SoBo customers and teasing their accent, or Enrico, the founder of the Mami Bombay, running his “I left my dream life in Italy” series, show the same pattern: audiences return because they recognise the people, not the product. These recurring figures act as anchors in a feed that shifts every second.

Most importantly, this shift in the space that we are looking at shows how people now process online content. Studies on attention point to a clear pattern: users want formats that don’t make their brain feel like it's running its own software update. Episodic series like these solve this by offering structure and repetition in a way the brain reads as safety. Cognitive research shows that people handle information better when it arrives in predictable units. The mind relaxes when it knows what the next beat might look like. In a high-stimulus environment, that kind of predictability works almost like a buffer. It reduces the friction of reorienting yourself every time a new piece of content appears, which is what makes the rest of the feed feel tiring.

Psychologists call this the “processing fluency” effect. When something is easy to digest, people tend to enjoy it more, trust it more, and return to it without hesitation. These mini-series tap into that. Each episode uses familiar cues, the same person, a steady tone, and a recurring setting. Viewers pick up on those cues fast. Their attention settles before the story even starts. That small sense of continuity creates its own reward. The brain likes recognising things; it treats recognition as a sign that the world is still orderly.

Why Mami’s videos feel more real than the rest of the feed

At this point, Indians are so fond of Enrico Signorelli, the founder of Mami Bombay, that someone may hand him an Aadhaar card before he finishes his next batch of tiramisu in his lab. His audience treats him less like a founder and more like a distant cousin who moved countries and now documents his life with the dedication of a man who understands that Mumbai traffic is a character arc. Why? Because Enrico keeps everything raw. He says, “The intention to keep it human is at the heart of Mami. What people love to see are brands which are close to them, that they can relate to, and that have a story to transmit.” 

He explains authenticity in a way most founders avoid: “You can’t be authentic trying to convey a message that doesn’t describe you. If you show who you are, people relate faster, and everything becomes simple.” He means that humans do not behave like brand decks, and the internet can tell when someone tries. His viewers respond most when he shows “the struggles, the success, the trials and experiments” of building Mami in India. 

Why the croffle guys treat their page like a sitcom

The Croffle Guys’ feed feels like a series that never had a writers’ room because it didn’t need one. Rahul Vohra describes their intention with a kind of clarity that makes the content make sense: “We didn’t want to sell a product—we wanted to sell a feeling.” Their episodes show them joking, teasing, disrupting each other’s work, and reacting to small daily chaos as if the universe had scheduled it for entertainment. Vohra breaks their dynamic down with unapologetic honesty: “Rahul is the funny guy, Amay is the sexy guy, Veer is the charming guy.” These roles aren’t invented. They’re simply held up to the light. Their humour comes from the comfort they have around one another—the kind of comfort you can’t edit into existence.

People return not for croffles but for continuity. Vohra says, “People come back for the characters more than anything else. They follow the inside jokes.” This matches how episodic storytelling works: it gives the mind something steady to recognise. Giulia captures this perfectly: “People want the story, not the screenshot.” 

How Mokai turned everyday chaos into a running story

Spend time at Mokai, and you’ll see why the café’s stories work. The charm is not the setting. It’s the people. Suraksha has become the unofficial narrator, speaking with the kind of blunt honesty that most people save for private conversations. Chef Vineet stands on the other end of the spectrum—calm, precise, and quietly dramatic. He keeps a list of people he would “hire and then fire,” which tracks once you watch him work.

Founder Karreena Bulchandani understood early that a simple café feed would never capture their energy. “A static cafe feed felt too quiet for what Mokai actually is.” She knows that the cafe’s charm is its noise, the honesty, and the way everyone exists with a level of familiarity you can’t teach.

That human texture builds a kind of attachment that surprises even the team. “People have gotten surprisingly attached,” Karreena says. “They recognise our baristas, servers, and chefs. They DM us inside jokes. They follow the tiny arcs that unfold.” She often mentions that people now send the café reels to recreate, which she describes as “the sweetest kind of pressure.” Giulia Raffaello’s insight ties it all together: “When you give people a world to come back to, they invest their time.” 

Why creators like Giulia prove human stories still win

Giulia Raffaello makes the strongest case for why episodic, human storytelling matters in a digital environment designed to exhaust people. She says, “AI can create a perfect sentence and a perfect image, but it cannot live a life. It cannot be confused, or lost, or starting again.” Her audience follows her because she shares the full arc,  the homesickness, the cultural shifts, and the joy of building something new. 

Over time, she has watched how viewers respond to continuity. “People save my series, ask follow-up questions, plan trips, and even share their own experiences back with me,” she says. “It feels like a conversation that continues across months, not a post that disappears in a day.” She also sees how shallow virality feels in comparison. “The things that go viral don’t hold the same depth. People see them, but they don’t stay for them.” This distinction captures the core of your pitch: attention isn’t dying—it’s becoming intentional. People are tired of isolated moments. They want timelines. They want characters. They want a world they can step into without feeling overwhelmed. As Raffaello puts it, “We are moving toward a diary-style internet. Less ‘look at me,’ more ‘come with me.’”

Lead image: IMDB

Also read: Do algorithms hold the key to long-term mental well-being?

Also read: What happens when boomers, Gen X, millennials, and Gen Z share the same office boardrooms?