How Coffee Creates Community: The Social Aspects of Coffee
Coffee is such a nice thing to share with friends, family and associates. Female friends make regular coffee dates to meet for uninterrupted chat time. And if a couple “just meets for coffee,” it takes the pressure out of dating, while still allowing them to get to know one another. Business colleagues often meet for coffee to strategize and share ideas, which is a little more logistically difficult to do over a full meal. Coffeehouses are important social gathering places for people from all walks of life.
Many coffeehouses also provide tea, baked goods, sandwiches or even full meals. Coffeehouses are popular throughout the U.S., Europe and the Middle East.
Coffeehouses are particularly important social gathering places for literary and artistic types. Historically speaking, this is particularly true of Paris. In the U.S., coffeehouses played a central role as meeting places for the beat poets of the 1950’s, including Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsburg and William S. Burroughs. Coffeehouses are integral to the arts, which are integral to human civilization.
Coffeehouses are places where intellectual and literary types like to hang out to read or write. Many a coffeehouse is also host to open mic entertainment, from poetry readings to musical entertainment. Coffeehouses also function as small art galleries or even movie houses. In short, coffeehouses create community.
In northern Europe a common form of entertaining is a coffee party. The host or hostess serves coffee, cake and pastries.
But the U.S. is the largest coffee market in the world, followed by Germany, then Japan. However, Nordic countries consume the most coffee per capita; Finland boasts the number one per-capita coffee consumption in the world, at more than 10 kg annually. Coffee is second only to petroleum in legally traded goods worldwide!
When you walk into a coffeehouse to enjoy a cup of java, you’re walking into a gathering place for the entire community–and oftentimes into a specialized micro community of artists.
coffee is very much about community, but perhaps more about culture and community. The dynamic is changeing
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