Coffee shop

Coffee shop: A public space for political debate, stories, gossip, games and for drinking coffee.

The coffee shop was originally established to sell coffee to the public, but it quickly became more than that, turning into a place for friends and neighbors to meet and discuss the issues of the day. Samuel Johnson defined it as: "A house of entertainment where coffee is sold and guests are supplied with newspapers." Consuming coffee thus became a social experience and the site where it was served became an important gathering place.

Coffee shops were established as soon as coffee was introduced to the Ottoman Empire in the early sixteenth century and later spread to Europe in the seventeenth century. The merchants and entrepreneurs who introduced coffee served it in public shops and these shops offered places for customers to stay while they drank their purchase. These social spaces became a venue of the free exchange of ideas, where people could discuss politics, share stories and play games. Authorities recognized the freedom of discussion offered by these new public spaces as dangerous and frequently took actions to suppress it, including in Mecca in the early sixteenth century and London in the mid-seventeenth century.

Nothing quite like the coffee shop had ever existed before and its provision of a space where social and business life could be mixed in pleasant surroundings proved immensely popular. The coffee shop became an influential public forum with a legacy that touched everything from the stock market and philosophy to science and literature. It was also seen as a great "social leveler" as it was open to all men, regardless of social status, as long as they could afford the price of a cup of coffee. With modern coffee shop chains such as Starbucks, now ubiquitous and an estimated 1.6 million cup of coffee drunk worldwide every day, the popularity of the coffee shop shows no sign of abating.