Lifting the lid on a peculiar Swiss passion

Published on April 25, 2026

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Swissinfo
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If you’ve ever ordered a coffee in Switzerland, the chances are you got a little creamer on the side. Did you carefully pocket the colourful foil top, the Kaffeerahmdeckeli? Probably not. For many Swiss, however, collecting these is almost an addiction – at least it used to be. “The collectors of coffee creamer lids were a real nuisance. In cafés there were people who went from table to table begging guests for their lids, or they scavenged deserted but not-yet-cleared tables for them. I eventually started punching a hole in the torn‑off lid after emptying the cream…” One person’s passion is another person’s peeve, as that reader reaction to an article in the Tages-Anzeiger from 2022 shows. While many people still buy or exchange lids, the glory days of the 1980s and 1990s are certainly over. But at its peak, Switzerland was the global hub of a very curious hobby. “Nowhere else was the collection of these small aluminium and plastic foils as excessive as in this country,” said the ... Full story here Are you the author?

About Swissinfo

SWI swissinfo.ch – the international service of the Swiss Broadcasting Corporation (SBC). Since 1999, swissinfo.ch has fulfilled the federal government’s mandate to distribute information about Switzerland internationally, supplementing the online offerings of the radio and television stations of the SBC. Today, the international service is directed above all at an international audience interested in Switzerland, as well as at Swiss citizens living abroad.

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