A coffeehouse, coffee shop, or café is an establishment that primarily serves coffee of various types, notably espresso, latte, and cappuccino. Some coffeehouses may serve cold drinks, such as iced coffee and iced tea, as well as other non-caffeinated beverages. In continental Europe, cafés serve alcoholic drinks. A coffeehouse may also serve food, such as light snacks, sandwiches, muffins, fruit, or pastries. Coffeehouses range from owner-operated small businesses to large multinational corporations. Some coffeehouse chains operate on a franchise business model, with numerous branches across various countries around the world.
From a cultural standpoint, coffeehouses largely serve as centers of social interaction: a coffeehouse provides patrons with a place to congregate, talk, read, write, entertain one another, or pass the time, whether individually or in small groups. Since the popularization of Wi-Fi, coffeehouses with this capability have also become places for patrons to access the Internet on their laptops and tablet computers. A coffeehouse can serve as an informal club for its regular members. As early as the 1950s Beatnik era and the 1960s folk music scene, coffeehouses have hosted singer-songwriter performances, typically in the evening.
In most European countries, such as Spain, Austria, Denmark, Germany, Norway, Sweden, Portugal, and others, the term café means a restaurant primarily serving coffee, as well as pastries such as cakes, tarts, pies, or buns. Many cafés also serve light meals such as sandwiches. European cafés often have tables on the pavement (sidewalk) as well as indoors. The Netherlands and Belgium, a café is the equivalent of a bar, and also sells alcoholic drinks. In the Netherlands a koffiehuis serves coffee.In France, most cafés serve as lunch restaurants in the day, and bars in the evening. They generally do not have pastries except in the mornings, when a croissant or pain au chocolat can be purchased with breakfast coffee. In Italy, cafés are similar to those found in France and known as bar. They typically serve a variety of espresso coffee, cakes and alcoholic drinks. Bars in city centers usually have different prices for consumption at the bar and consumption at a table.
The first coffeehouses in the Islamic world, qahveh khaneh (Persian for coffee house), appeared in Damascus. These Ottoman coffeehouses also appeared in Mecca, in the Arabian Peninsula in the 15th century, then spread to the Ottoman Empire's capital of Istanbul in the 16th century. Coffeehouses became popular meeting places where people gathered to drink coffee, have conversations, play board games such as chess and backgammon, listen to stories and music, and discuss news and politics. They became known as "schools of wisdom" for the type of clientele they attracted, and their free and frank discourse.
Coffeehouses in Mecca became a concern of imams who viewed them as places for political gatherings and drinking, leading to bans between 1512 and 1524.However, these bans could not be maintained, due to coffee becoming ingrained in daily ritual and culture across the Islamic world. The Ottoman chronicler İbrahim Peçevi reports in his writings (1642–49) about the opening of the first coffeehouse in Istanbul
A café is a type of restaurant which typically serves coffee and tea, in addition to light refreshments such as baked goods or snacks. The term "café" comes from the French word meaning "coffee".
A café setting is known as a casual social environment where you can find people reading newspapers and magazines, playing board games, studying or chatting with others about current events. It is also regarded as a place where information can be exchanged.
A café is sometimes called a coffeehouse or a coffee shop or tea shop in English, a café in French and a bar in Italian (cafe or café is the common spelling used in English, French, Spanish, Portuguese et al. however the word is spelled "caffè" in Italian). It shares some characteristics of a bar and some characteristics of a restaurant given its selection of foods and beverages served, but is distinct from a cafeteria which is a type of restaurant where customers can choose from many dishes displayed on a serving line. In some countries, cafés are designed to more closely resemble restaurants whereby offering a range of hot meals and possibly licensed to serve alcohol. Most British cafés however, do not sell alcohol likely due to the prominent pub culture.
Café variations
In the Netherlands, cannabis-selling cafés face an uncertain future under a planned new law banning smoking in public places. The cafés, which attract millions of tourists each year, allow customers to buy marijuana over the counter and openly smoke it. The acronym CAFE, Cannabis and Fine Edibles is used in Canada to represent the largest retail chain in the country, post-legalization.
A new type of café, known as the Internet café, was introduced in the 1990s and went hand in hand with the rising prevalence of computers in society. Computers and Internet access in a contemporary atmosphere created a youthful, modern public space compared to existing locales including traditional bars and old-fashioned diners. Nowadays, many cafés offer public wireless Internet or even have computers, telephones, and newspapers for customer use. Further integrating internet usage to the café atmosphere, some stores like Starbucks allow you to order directly from your smartphone, tablet, or other devices through their free store app or websites online.
More recently alongside the growing popularity of geek and gaming culture, gaming cafés have also begun to open in cities worldwide. These cafés offer a library of board games and tabletop games, from childhood classics such as Monopoly to indie games, for customers to play at their leisure for a nominal fee.
A café is different from a coffee shop in that a variety of food items are usually offered at a café, whereas a coffee shop usually only has a small assortment of desserts and pastries. If you plan on opening up a café, you will need to devote just as much time to the development and planning of a menu as you will to the creation of different coffee beverages and drink items.
It can be difficult to create a café menu from scratch, so it's a good idea to consider some of the standards included at most cafés. These five menu items are a great starting place for your café.
Sandwiches
Sandwiches are always popular at cafes. You can offer hot and cold sandwiches that use a variety of different high quality breads, meats, cheeses, and vegetables. You can even offer a special sandwich of the day, that is prepared and ready to go, for those who want to order and leave quickly.
Soup
Soup is almost a necessity at a café. Customers love the comforting nature of hot soups made with fresh ingredients such as chicken, beef, pasta and assorted vegetables.
Salads
A fresh salad or two is a great thing to add to a café menu. Many customers choose cafes for their eating needs because they anticipate being able to find healthier options when compared with a fast food restaurant. Light salads, therefore, should be included on your menu.
Breakfast Items
It may be a good idea to include a few breakfast items on your café menu and cater to the early-morning crowd at your cafe. Breakfast pastries, eggs, waffles, pancakes, and assorted fruit are simple menu items that will increase your profits during the morning hours.
Pastries and Desserts
Because your café will be offering coffee beverages along with a full menu of food items, it's a good idea to include a variety of pastries and desserts on the menu. This will improve the success of your business during off-hours such as after lunch and after dinner. If customers want to come into your café for a quick coffee, they may be more likely to indulge in a sweet snack if you have an assortment of delectable desserts available and on display.
Coffee cake and muffins are perfect accompaniments to hot coffee, so these pastry items are quite common in cafes. Many cafes also offer different varieties of cookies, cakes, cupcakes, cheesecakes, biscuits, sweet rolls, cinnamon rolls, and even a special cookie called biscotti, which is baked twice and perfect for dunking in a hot cup of coffee. Remember, the goal for every café owner is to sell as much to each customer as possible. If you don't have any sweet snacks available, customers will be satisfied with only a cup of coffee. If the sweet treats are there, however, they will be very likely to indulge.
This is by nio means a comprehensive list of the food items offered at a café. However, if you start simple with these basic items and slowly add new items to your menu, you will be in a great position to please your clientele and steadily increase the business at your café.
Until the year 962 [1555], in the High, God-Guarded city of Constantinople, as well as in Ottoman lands generally, coffee and coffeehouses did not exist. About that year, a fellow called Hakam from Aleppo and a wag called Shams from Damascus came to the city; they each opened a large shop in the district called Tahtakale, and began to purvey coffee.
Etymology
The most common English spelling café, is the French, Portuguese, and Spanish spelling, and was adopted by English-speaking countries in the late 19th century. The Italian spelling, caffè, is also sometimes used in English. In Southern England, especially around London in the 1950s, the French pronunciation was often facetiously altered to /kæf/ and spelt caff.
The English words coffee and café derive from the Italian word for coffee, caffè[12][13]—first attested as caveé in Venice in 1570—and in turn derived from Arabic qahwa . The Arabic term qahwa originally referred to a type of wine, but after the wine ban by Islam, the name was transferred to coffee because of the similar rousing effect it induced. European knowledge of coffee (the plant, its seeds, and the drink made from the seeds) came through European contact with Turkey, likely via Venetian-Ottoman trade relations.
The English word café to describe a restaurant that usually serves coffee and snacks rather than the word coffee that describes the drink, is derived from the French café. The first café in France is believed to have opened in 1660. The first café in Europe is believed to have been opened in Belgrade, Serbia in 1522 as a Kafana (Serbian coffee house).
The translingual word root /kafe/ appears in many European languages with various naturalized spellings, including Portuguese, Spanish, and French (café); German (Kaffee); Polish (kawa); Serbian (кафа / kafa); Ukrainian (кава, 'kava'); and others.
The espresso bar is a type of coffeehouse that specializes in coffee drinks made from espresso. Originating in Italy, the espresso bar has spread throughout the world in various forms. Prime examples that are internationally known are Starbucks Coffee, based in Seattle, U.S., and Costa Coffee, based in Dunstable, U.K. (the first and second largest coffeehouse chains respectively), although the espresso bar exists in some form throughout much of the world.
The espresso bar is typically centered around a long counter with a high-yield espresso machine (usually bean to cup machines, automatic or semiautomatic pump-type machine, although occasionally a manually operated lever-and-piston system) and a display case containing pastries and occasionally savory items such as sandwiches. In the traditional Italian bar, customers either order at the bar and consume their drinks standing or, if they wish to sit down and be served, are usually charged a higher price. In some bars there is an additional charge for drinks served at an outside table. In other countries, especially the United States, seating areas for customers to relax and work are provided free of charge. Some espresso bars also sell coffee paraphernalia, candy, and even music. North American espresso bars were also at the forefront of widespread adoption of public WiFi access points to provide Internet services to people doing work on laptop computers on the premises.
The offerings at the typical espresso bar are generally quite Italianate in inspiration; biscotti, cannoli and pizzelle are a common traditional accompaniment to a caffe latte or cappuccino. Some upscale espresso bars even offer alcoholic drinks such as grappa and sambuca. Nevertheless, typical pastries are not always strictly Italianate and common additions include scones, muffins, croissants, and even doughnuts. There is usually a large selection of teas as well, and the North American espresso bar culture is responsible for the popularization of the Indian spiced tea drink masala chai. Iced drinks are also popular in some countries, including both iced tea and iced coffee as well as blended drinks such as Starbucks' Frappucino.
A worker in an espresso bar is referred to as a barista. The barista is a skilled position that requires familiarity with the drinks being made (often very elaborate, especially in North American-style espresso bars), a reasonable facility with some equipment as well as the usual customer service skills.
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