Why we meet over coffee

Think about the last time something big happened in your life. Good news, bad news, a friend back in town after years away. Someone probably said the same five words: let’s go get a coffee.

Coffee is how we gather. We meet over it to celebrate. We meet over it to catch up. And when someone is sad and doesn’t know what’s going on, we sit them down with a warm cup and say, let’s talk about it.

The original social network

This is not new. The coffeehouses of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were where people argued about philosophy, politics and religion. In London they were nicknamed penny universities: for the price of a cup, you could sit with anyone and learn something. In Vienna, the café became a second living room.

Coffee shops have always been more than places to buy a drink. They are places to think out loud, together.

After we were kept apart

When the pandemic ended, I watched the need to gather turn into something urgent. People wanted to sit across from each other again. New coffee shops opened everywhere in the United States, and they filled up. Everybody saw it. For me it settled something: I wanted to work on spreading good coffee, because good coffee keeps those tables full.

The cup at the center of the table

I grew up in Ecuador, in a Colombian family. Every afternoon we gathered around coffee and something sweet. The gathering was beautiful. The coffee was instant.

That is the strange part. We give coffee a place at the center of our most important moments, and then we barely look at what’s in the cup. If coffee is going to be there when we celebrate and when we grieve, it deserves to be good. Grown with care, roasted with respect, and worth talking about.

So next time someone says let’s get a coffee, say yes. And make it a good one.