The Coffee shop culture today
Time was when the coffee shop or the coffee house as it was called was really a meeting place. Coffee was the most important accompaniment to the chatter and everything else was just by the way. However, today’s coffee shop is really a coffee stop and more. It’s more like a restaurant where you can also stop for coffee.
Coffee shops today are big business. Look at the big brands running them, fuelling them to more and more profits. So you have chains like Starbucks, you have Tim Horton’s and Coffee Republic, Costa Coffee and Caffè Nero. Starbucks of course has over 8000 locations across the globe.
Let’s look at the flavor of coffee shops around the world today. What is true still is that very often it is a meeting place – a hang out place as the young would call it. Only today, there’s music playing and very often, it is an Internet café. Computers and especially Wi-Fi has seen these cafes opening up all over not just the cities but the countryside as well. In fact, what seems to be happening in a lot of places is that suddenly the coffee shop has become a mix of the old world coffee house and the English pub. It’s a place to while away a few hours, to talk to your friends about the last game or the one to come, to gossip about the new girl in town, whatever. The coffee shop offers a place for the young to gather, even those who are too young to go to the bars or the pubs. Besides the large chains, you will also find the local little cafes all over the world. In Paris, you’ll find them out in the streets, a great place to watch the world go by as you slowly sip your coffee. The lure of these sidewalk cafes have spread to most of the European countries and the sight of these little tables with their checkered tablecloths and parasols is inviting. In Australia, the coffee shops spill out onto the streets and have a party atmosphere about them. In the Netherlands, coffee shops are also cannabis shops and make for a very relaxed ambience.
In the Far East, coffee shops are very often breakfast stops – where you can get a quick bite on your way to work. So eggs and toast are very much part of the standard fare offered. In the Middle Eastern countries, you could find people playing chess or watching TV over a cup of coffee.
Coffee shops are so well-entrenched into the mainstream of our existence that we just cannot imagine life without them anymore. They’ve become not just part of our cultural habits but a part of our history!