Peeking, freshly-painted and proud from a grotty east London thoroughfare, where the uptight City surrenders to the studied insouciance of Shoreditch, is a new business venture that could perhaps only raise its head in this particular corner of the capital.

But then nothing about the location of the Vape Lab, which bills itself as London's first electonic-cigarette-store-cum-coffee-shop, was left to chance. The former hair salon, now a sleek mélange of oak floors, white tiles and vintage tables, sits close enough to Bishopsgate to appeal to pinstriped nicotine cravers and sufficiently near Hoxton to attract hipsters seeking a post-prandial e-cigarette after sauntering from the Andean soul food restaurant just down the road.

"We live here and we really love the vibes of this neighbourhood," said Pierre Durand, who co-owns the shop with fellow expat Frenchman and fellow City worker Jonathan Cadeilhan. "Maybe this is the only place where you could start off this concept. People here are open-minded."

If only the same could be said of some of the passersby. Although the Vape Lab has been open for a mere five days, some Twitter users find the shop a perfect opportunity to riff on east-London stereotypes.

"On Shoreditch High Street – obviously – there is now the Vape Lab, an e-cigarette and coffee shop," wrote one. "Oh, it's just like Vienna, 1900."

Another was even more withering: "Jeeeeezus, just gone past 'The Vape Lab', an e-cigarette and coffee shop in Shoreditch *life spirit oozes out onto the floor of the bus*."

The affable and enthusiastic Durand and Cadeilhan, however, are confident that they know their products and their consumers.

The idea for the establishment, where punters can – as the website puts it – "experience an old fashioned coffee and an e-cig with our exceptional range of fair-trade and organic Java and beautifully engineered electronic cigarettes", was hatched in January, and by the beginning of March, the pair had found a shop and began making it over with the help of an interior designer friend.

Cadeilhan, who has seen e-cigarette shops proliferate in France, is convinced that the refillable brushed-metal devices that the store sells are the shape of fags to come. "In France, it's a major market already – there are maybe more than a thousand shops in France and about 300 in Paris," he said. "Here in London, it's a young market: you see people here with disposable cigarettes and they will switch to electronic cigarettes. In five years' time, there will be no more tobacco."

Electronic cigarettes, which are becoming increasingly popular, contain a battery and a heating element that warms a nicotine solution to create an odourless vapour – hence using e-cigarettes is known as vaping rather than smoking. Unlike smoking, it is legal to vape indoors.

The shop offers an extensive range of flavoured "e-liquids": from custard to Cuban tobacco, absinthe to gin and coconut to tangerine. And while its products do not come cheap – reusable base units start at £45; 10ml bottles of flavoured solutions at £7 – Durand and Cadeilhan argue that a 10ml bottle is equivalent to seven packets of normal cigarettes, making it a vastly cheaper fix.

They also insist that vaping could not be more different to its now-leprous forerunner. Supporters say the e-cigarette gives people a nicotine hit without the toxins that are present in tobacco cigarettes.

"People sit here and talk to each other," says Durand. "The vaping attitude is completely different. When you smoke, you have a cigarette, you have a short length of time, you have to go outside where it's cold. When you vape, you can relax. Most of the time, customers who don't know each other sit down and start having a chat."

Customers were not much in evidence when the Guardian visited the Vape Lab on Tuesday afternoon, but presumably even City types and hipsters have commitments that preclude an outright abandonment to weekday sybaritism. But if all goes well, the Vape Lab's owners wouldn't mind expanding their business to Mayfair and South Kensington, home to so many of their exiled countrymen.

First things first, though: Durand and Cadeilhan's next project is the establishment of a private molecular cocktail bar in the basement.