“The World is Mine,” “Romeo and Cinderella,” “PoPiPo,” “Brain Fluid Explosion Girl.”
If those song titles sound familiar, you’ll be excited to learn cyber celebrity Hatsune Miku is currently featuring in a collaboration with Richie’s Café on Temple University’s campus.
For everyone else, here’s an explanation.
Hatsune Miku is a virtual popstar, created by Sapporo-based Crypton Future Media as an avatar for its vocal synthesizing software, Vocaloid, which allows users to compose songs with prerecorded voice samples (the character’s name is a Japanese portmanteau translating in full to “first sound of the future.”)
Since debuting in 2007, and through a growing bank of user-generated songs backed by live musicians, Miku has gone on to “perform” as a projected animation at concerts around the world, including a current North American tour, or “expo.”
Tarik Dzemaili, operations manager at Richie’s Café, had been discussing those upcoming shows with an employee and fellow Miku fan last September when the idea for a collaboration struck.
He emailed a proposal to CFM, keeping his expectations in check—despite being perpetually sixteen and non-existent, Miku’s status as a performer is impressively real, from opening for Lady Gaga in 2013 and appearing on Letterman (“our next guest is a computer-generated Vocaloid…”), to getting remixed by Pharrell and featuring in this year’s lineup at Coachella. She’s even been the lead in a shampoo commercial co-starring Scarlett Johansson.
“Honestly, I was pretty shocked that [CFM] agreed to the collaboration, since we’re so small,” Dzemaili told Billy Penn. Moving into its current location in 2021, the family-owned café is an offshoot of Richie’s Sandwich Shop, which Dzemaili’s father opened on Temple’s campus in 1969.
Today, Richie’s Café stands as a temporary Hatsune Miku fan club, with the collaboration running till May 5. There’s a life-size cardboard cutout for selfies, with balloons matching the character’s color scheme and figurines perched throughout the space, while a playlist of some of the 100,000-plus songs featuring Miku flows uninterrupted. Dzemaili has even added to the synthesized singer’s repertoire, hiring Vocaloid producer Jamie Paige to compose a theme for the café’s collaboration, featuring Miku.
While commercial collaborations with virtual performers are common in Japan, it’s never been done with a café in America, the 28-year-old operations manager explained, “so I wanted to try and go all out with it.”
Dzemaili has also commissioned custom artwork for the occasion—a poster of Miku hanging out at Richie’s is displayed by the counter, illustrated by Lucy Zhang, along with stickers, one given out for each order off the Miku specials menu, designed by @joi_fulli.
For the collaboration’s special menu, Dzemaili, with help from his mother, Edina, has come up with a quartet of blue-tinted drinks to match Miku’s iconic twin-tailed hairstyle. There’s the Miku macchiato, with condensed milk blended with a butterfly pea powder for coloring, topped with an espresso-infused cream. Miku’s Brew is a birthday cake-flavored cold brew with a sweet blue cold foam, while the Frozen Matcha Melody is a sweet frappe with a head of whipped cream and sprinkles. Lastly, the Virtual Singer combines lychee soda with a splash of pineapple juice and blue curaçao. Each comes with a custom coffee sleeve.
The specials menu for the Richie’s Cafe collaboration with Hatsune Miku. (Richie’s Cafe) 
For the Hatsune Miku collaboration at Richie’s Cafe, operations manager Tarik Dzemaili came up with a special menu of themed snacks and drinks. (Ali Mohsen/Billy Penn) 
Miku’s Brew, a birthday cake-flavored cold brew with a sweet blue cold foam topped with sprinkles, is one of the four beverages on the Hatsune Miku inspired menu at Richie’s Cafe. (Ali Mohsen/Billy Penn) 
Inspired by a meme, the leek cream cheese bagel is one of the two food items off the Hatsune Miku-inspired menu at Richie’s Cafe, available through May 5. (Ali Mohsen/Billy Penn)
Finding character connections to food was trickier, Dzemaili said. There’s Miku’s Waffle, a Belgian variety colorfully topped with cookie butter sauce, marshmallow cream, and sprinkles. Less obvious is the leek cream cheese bagel, apparently a nod to a meme involving Miku and leeks that’s too confusing to get into here but seems to have something to do with her cover of a traditional Finnish folk song. More relevantly, Richie’s cream cheese is blended with sautéed leeks and shredded gruyere.
Heading into the first of its two weekends, the collaboration already seems to be a hit with on-campus Miku devotees. “I ordered 2,000 initially,” Dzemaili said of the stickers given with each purchase off the special menu. “And then I had to order 2,000 more.”
A Hatsune Miku fan since she was eight, Temple student Kristina Petanaj said she was “super excited” to find out about the collaboration with the on-campus coffeeshop, stopping in specifically to snap a selfie.
“Out of every café in the world that Miku could have come to herself, she chose Richie’s,” Petanaj said. “So, I came to meet my idol.”
The collaboration with Richie’s Café runs till May 5. Hatsune Miku will be performing in Newark at the Prudential Center on May 7. Tickets range from $90 to $1,088.
1802 N. Warnock St. | 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday-Friday, 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday-Sunday | www.richies.cafe | @richies.cafe
