Four Cuts and a Queue: The Korean Photo Booth Is Britain's New High-Street Habit

On a grey Saturday in Soho, the queue outside a narrow glass-fronted unit is not for bubble tea or a sample sale. It is for a curtained booth, a stool, and eight quid. Inside, four friends rearrange themselves for the fourth time, tap a screen, and wait for the flash. Thirty seconds later, a strip of four photographs slides out. They do not look like passport photos. They look like a memory.

From Hongdae to the high street

Korean four-cut photo studios — the kind that have been a fixture in Seoul's Hongdae and Busan's Seomyeon for years — have quietly become a British high-street habit. You will find them in London's Soho, Shoreditch and Camden; in Manchester's Northern Quarter; in Birmingham's Digbeth; in Bristol's Stokes Croft; in Glasgow and Leeds. Some are independent one-room operations. Others are small chains with two or three booths and a wall of props.

The format is simple. You pay £6 to £10, choose a frame, pile into a booth with up to four people, and take four shots. You get a physical strip and usually a digital copy. There are filters, props, and customisable borders. There is no photographer and no pressure. The whole thing takes five minutes.

Why eight quid feels like a bargain

The price point matters. A cinema ticket in a UK city can cost £12 to £16. A round of coffees is £12. A four-cut strip is cheaper than both, and you leave with something you can stick on a mirror. For teenagers, it is an after-school ritual that does not require a pub or a parent. For couples, it is a date-night stopgap between dinner and the last train. For friends, it is a reason to meet up that is not another group chat.

'We took over a unit that had been empty for months,' says Priya, who co-owns a four-cut studio in Manchester's Northern Quarter. 'The rent was reasonable because the high street is struggling. We painted it pink, put in two booths, and we were busy from the first weekend. We get students after school, hen dos on Saturdays, and mums and daughters on Sunday afternoons.'

The strips are designed to be shared. They end up on bedroom walls, in phone cases, on fridge doors. They are analogue enough to feel special, but cheap enough to do again next week. That combination is catnip for a generation that has grown up with infinite camera rolls but very few physical photographs.

The business of a booth

The model is not complicated. A small unit, two to four booths, low staff overheads, and high footfall. The booths themselves are imported or leased. The margins depend on rent, which is why the trend has taken root in areas where landlords are keen to fill empty shops. Pop-ups and short leases are common.

But the risks are just as obvious. Four-cut studios are not hard to copy. A rival can open two streets away with the same booths and a louder Instagram grid. The novelty can wear off. The cost-of-living squeeze can turn an £8 treat into an £8 skip.

'We are not a fad, but we are not a licence to print money either,' says Tom, who runs a studio in Bristol. 'The first six months were mad. Now we have to work for it. We do student nights, birthday packages, and collabs with local artists. The booths are the hook; the service is the business.'

The memory-making question

Is the four-cut strip the most Gen Z form of memory-making? It is certainly a contender. It is low-stakes, photogenic, and built for sharing. It turns an ordinary afternoon into a small event. It is also a reaction against the endless scroll: a physical object you can hold.

But it is also a high-street trend, and high-street trends have a shelf life. The question is whether the ritual outlasts the novelty. The early signs are mixed. Some studios are already consolidating. Others are expanding into party bookings and corporate events. The smart ones are treating the booth as a stage, not a product.

For now, the queues are still there. On a wet Saturday in November, that is saying something. The four-cut strip may not be the future of the high street, but it is a very good use of eight quid.