What is coffee?
Coffee is a widely-consumed stimulant beverage prepared from roasted seeds, commonly called coffee beans, of the coffee plant. Coffee was first consumed in the 9th century, when it was discovered in the highlands of Ethiopia. From there, it spread to Egypt and Yemen, and by the 15th century had reached Armenia, Persia, Turkey, and northern Africa. From the Muslim world, coffee spread to Italy, then to the rest of Europe and the Americas. Today, coffee is one of the most popular beverages worldwide.
Coffee is an important export commodity. In 2004, coffee was the top agricultural export for 12 countries, and in 2005, it was the world's seventh largest legal agricultural export by value.
Some controversy is associated with coffee cultivation and its impact on the environment. Many studies have examined the relationship between coffee consumption and certain medical conditions; whether the effects of coffee are positive or negative is still disputed.
What is a Coffeehouse?
A coffeehouse / Café is an establishment which primarily serves prepared coffee or other hot beverages. It shares some of the characteristics of a bar, and some of the characteristics of a restaurant, but it is different from a cafeteria. As the name suggests, coffeehouses focus on providing coffee and tea as well as light snacks.
From a cultural standpoint, coffeehouses largely serve as centers of social interaction: the coffeehouse provides social members with a place to congregate, talk, write, read, entertain one another, or pass the time, whether individually or in small groups.
Cafes may have an outdoor section (terrace, pavement or sidewalk cafe) with seats, tables and parasols. This is especially the case with European cafes. Cafes offer a more open public space compared to many of the traditional pubs they have replaced, which were more male dominated with a focus on drinking alcohol.
One of the original uses of the cafe, as a place for information exchange and communication, was reintroduced in the 1990s with the Internet cafe or Hotspot (Wi-Fi). The spread of modern style cafes to many places, urban and rural, went hand in hand with computers. Computers and Internet access in a contemporary-styled venue helps to create a youthful, modern, outward-looking place, compared to the traditional pubs or old-fashioned diners that they replaced.
American coffee shops are also often connected with indie, jazz and acoustic music, and will often have them playing either live or recorded in their shops. Coffeehouses are often gathering places for underage youths who cannot go to bars.
In the United Kingdom, traditional coffeehouses as gathering places for youths fell out of favour after the 1960s, but the concept has been revived since the 1990s by chains such as Starbucks, Coffee Republic, Costa Coffee, and Caffè Nero as places for professional workers to meet and eat out or simply to buy beverages and snack foods on their way to and from the workplace.
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