café

Etymology

The Arabic word qahwa (قهوة) is the origin of the Italian caffè (first attested as caveé in Venice in 1570), from which the English coffee and French café both derive. The Arabic term originally meant a type of wine, but after the wine ban by Islam, the name was transferred to coffee, thought to have a similar rousing effect. 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.

Café (French: [kafe] ) is the French word for both coffee and coffeehouse; it was adopted (as /ˈkæfeɪ/) 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 and spelt caff.

The English word café to describe a place that serves coffee and snacks (rather than the drink itself) is derived from the French café. The first café in France is believed to have opened in 1660. Meanwhile, the first café in Europe is believed to have been opened in Belgrade, Ottoman Serbia in 1522 as a Kafana (Serbian coffeehouse).

The translingual word root /kafe/ appears in many European languages with various naturalized spellings, including Portuguese and French (café); German (Kaffeehaus or Café); Swedish (kafé or fik); Finnish (kahvila); Spanish (cafetería); Italian (caffè or caffetteria); Polish (kawa); Serbian (кафа / kafa); Ukrainian (кава (kava)); Turkish (kahvehane).

Early history

Early forms of the beverage now known as coffee were consumed in Yemen, where Sufi orders used qahwa to maintain wakefulness during nighttime dhikr recitations. This early coffee-based beverage was named after the port city of Mokha, from which coffee beans were first exported to the other parts of the Arab world. Yemen was once one of the world's major producers and exporters, with "Mocha" coffee. Yemeni traders played a crucial role in spreading both the beverage and its associated rituals, contributing to its growing popularity across the Islamic world.

In the 15th century, coffee cultivation and consumption began in Yemen, where merchants transformed it into a lucrative and commercial product. The beans, often sourced from the Ethiopian highlands, were roasted, ground, and brewed in a method that closely resembles modern coffee preparation. By the early 16th century, coffee spread northward to Mecca, Cairo, and Damascus, where coffeehouses — known as maqāhī (مقاهي) became popular meeting places.

Ottoman Empire

The first coffeehouses appeared in Damascus. These coffeehouses also made their way to Mecca, in the Arabian Peninsula in the 15th century, then spread to the Ottoman Empire's capital of Istanbul, when two Arab merchants, Hakem of Aleppo and Shems of Damascus, opened the first coffeehouse in the Tahtakale district in the 16th century and to Baghdad.

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, as coffee became ingrained in daily ritual and culture among Arabs and neighboring peoples. The Ottoman chronicler İbrahim Peçevi reports in his writings (1642–49) about the opening of the first coffeehouse (kiva han) in Constantinople:

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.

Iran

The 17th-century French traveler and writer Jean Chardin gave a lively description of the Persian coffeehouse (qahveh khaneh in Persian):

People engage in conversation, for it is there that news is communicated and where those interested in politics criticize the government in all freedom and without being fearful, since the government does not heed what the people say. Innocent games ... resembling checkers, hopscotch, and chess, are played. In addition, mollas, dervishes, and poets take turns telling stories in verse or in prose. The narrations by the mollas and the dervishes are moral lessons, like our sermons, but it is not considered scandalous not to pay attention to them. No one is forced to give up his game or his conversation because of it. A molla will stand up in the middle, or at one end of the qahveh-khaneh, and begin to preach in a loud voice, or a dervish enters all of a sudden, and chastises the assembled on the vanity of the world and its material goods. It often happens that two or three people talk at the same time, one on one side, the other on the opposite, and sometimes one will be a preacher and the other a storyteller.

Mughal Empire

Consumption of Turkish coffee is attested to in the Mughal court, and appears in Mughal art from the 16th century, as is the existence of qahwakhanas (coffeehouses) in Shahjahanabad (Old Delhi).

Modern history

Europe

In the 17th century, coffee appeared for the first time in Europe outside the Ottoman Empire, and coffeehouses were established, soon becoming increasingly popular. The first public coffeehouse in Europe proper was opened in Belgrade, year 1521 and shortly after the city fell to the Ottomans. It was followed by coffeehouse in Sarajevo, at then lively part of the town called Bentbaša, around year 1532. Bentbaša was on the route of caravans and was thus a popular meeting point. Outside Ottoman Empire in Europe, first coffeehouse is said to have appeared in 1632 in Livorno, Italy, founded by a Jewish merchant, or in 1640, in Venice. In the 19th and 20th centuries in Europe, coffeehouses were very often meeting places for writers and artists.

The traditional tale of the origins of the Viennese café begins with the mysterious sacks of green beans left behind when the Turks were defeated in the Battle of Vienna in 1683. All the sacks of coffee were granted to the victorious Polish king, Jan III Sobieski, who in turn gave them to one of his officers, Jerzy Franciszek Kulczycki (also known as Georg Kolschitzky), a Ukrainian Cossack and Polish diplomat of Ruthenian descent. Kulczycki, according to the tale, then began the first coffeehouse in Vienna with the hoard, also being the first to serve coffee with milk.

However, it is now widely accepted that the first Viennese coffeehouse was actually opened by an Armenian merchant named Johannes Diodato (also known as Johannes Theodat) in 1685. Fifteen years later, four other Armenians owned coffeehouses. The culture of drinking coffee was itself widespread in the country in the second half of the 18th century.

Over time, a Viennese coffeehouse culture developed. Writers, artists, musicians, intellectuals, bon vivants and their financiers met, and new coffee varieties were served. People played cards or chess, worked, read, thought, composed, discussed, argued, observed and just chatted. Much information was also obtained, because local and foreign newspapers were freely available to all customers. This form of coffeehouse culture spread throughout the Habsburg Empire in the 19th century.

Scientific theories, political plans and artistic projects were worked out and discussed in Viennese coffeehouses all over Central Europe. James Joyce enjoyed his coffee in a Viennese coffeehouse on the Adriatic Sea in Trieste, then and now the main port for coffee and coffee processing in Italy and Central Europe. From there, the Viennese Kapuziner coffee developed into today's cappuccino. This special multicultural atmosphere of the Habsburg coffeehouses was largely destroyed by the later Nazism and communism and today can only be found in a few places that have long been in the slipstream of history, such as Vienna or Trieste.

The Americas

Coffeehouses are part of the culture of Buenos Aires and the customs of its inhabitants. They are traditional meeting places for porteños and have inspired innumerable artistic creations. Some notable coffeehouses include Confitería del Molino, Café Tortoni, El Gato Negro, and Café La Biela.

The first coffeehouse in the United States opened in Boston, in 1676. However, Americans did not start choosing coffee over tea until the Boston Tea Party and the Revolutionary War. After the Revolutionary War, Americans briefly went back to drinking tea until after the War of 1812 when they began importing high-quality coffee from Latin America and expensive inferior-quality tea from American shippers instead of Great Britain. Whether they were drinking coffee or tea, coffeehouses, like those in Great Britain, were places where business was done. In the 1780s, Merchant's Coffee House on Wall Street in New York City was home to the organization of the Bank of New York and the New York Chamber of Commerce.

Coffeehouses in the United States arose from the espresso- and pastry-centered Italian coffeehouses of the Italian American immigrant communities in the major U.S. cities, notably New York City's Little Italy and Greenwich Village, Boston's North End, and San Francisco's North Beach. From the late 1950s onward, coffeehouses also hosted entertainment, most commonly folk performers during the American folk music revival. Both Greenwich Village and North Beach became major haunts of the Beats, who were highly identified with these coffeehouses. As the youth culture of the 1960s evolved, non-Italians consciously copied these coffeehouses. The political nature of much of 1960s folk music made the music a natural tie-in with coffeehouses with their association with political action. A number of well-known performers like Joan Baez and Bob Dylan began their careers performing in coffeehouses. Blues singer Lightnin' Hopkins bemoaned his woman's overindulgence in coffeehouse socializing in his 1969 song "Coffeehouse Blues".

In 1966, Alfred Peet began applying the dark roast style to high quality beans and opened up a small shop in Berkeley, California to educate customers on the virtues of good coffee. Starting in 1967 with the opening of the Last Exit on Brooklyn coffeehouse, Seattle became known for its thriving countercultural coffeehouse scene; the Starbucks chain later standardized and mainstreamed this espresso bar model, now prevalent throughout the country.

Contemporary history

A café may have an outdoor section (on a terrace, pavement or sidewalk) with seats, tables and parasols. This is especially common in Europe. Cafés offer a more open public space than many of the traditional pubs they have replaced, which were more male-dominated with a focus on alcohol.

One of the original uses of the café, as a place for information exchange and communication, was reintroduced in the 1990s with the Internet café or hotspot. The spread of modern-style cafés to urban and rural areas went hand-in-hand with the rising use of mobile computers. Computers and Internet access and contemporary decor help to create a youthful, modern place, compared to the traditional pubs or old-fashioned diners that they replaced.

Africa

Coffeehouses in Egypt are colloquially called ʿahwah /ʔhwa/, the dialectal pronunciation of قَهْوة qahwah (literally "coffee") These were named after what was then the most popular drink that they served, though also commonly served in ʿahwah are tea (shāy) and herbal teas, especially the highly popular hibiscus blend (Egyptian Arabic: karkadeh or ennab).

The first ʿahwah opened around the 1850s but for a long time were patronized mostly by older people, with youths frequenting but not always ordering. However:

By the 1920s, there were many coffee shops throughout Egypt. They could be classified into three major kinds: the Alexandrian bursa, the Cairo club, and the rural gharza (inn). ... [All three] gradually became significant centres where Egyptians sipped the spirit of integration and unity.

In Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia, independent coffeehouses that struggled before 1991 have become popular with young professionals who do not have time for traditional coffee roasting at home. One that has become well known is Tomoca, which opened in 1953.

Asia

In India, coffee culture has expanded in the past twenty years. Chains like Indian Coffee House, Café Coffee Day, and Barista Lavazza have become very popular. Cafés are considered good places to conduct office meetings and for friends to meet.

In China, a growing number of domestic coffeehouse chains have emerged since the 1990s. Among them, Luckin Coffee, founded in Beijing in 2017, has become a notable homegrown challenger to Western brands that have dominated China's market such as Starbucks. By leveraging a digital-first, app-based model and aggressive pricing, Luckin rapidly expanded to over 20,000 stores in China by 2024, overtaking Starbucks as the country's largest coffee chain by revenue and store count. Starbucks' market share in China fell from a peak of 42% in 2017 to 14% in 2024, while Luckin posted strong revenue and profit growth. In 2025, Luckin took its rivalry global by opening its first U.S. stores in New York City, signaling the rise of a domestic Chinese coffee brand on the world stage. Coffee culture continues to expand in major cities, though tea remains the dominant and historical daily beverage for most of the population.

In Malaysia and Singapore, traditional breakfast and coffee shops are called kopi tiam. The word is a compound of the Malay word for coffee (as borrowed and altered from English) and the Hokkien dialect word for shop (店; POJ: tiàm). Menus typically offer a variety of simple dishes based on egg, toast, and coconut jam, plus coffee, tea, and Milo, a popular malted chocolate drink.

In Indonesia, traditional coffeehouses are called kedai kopi, rumah kopi, or warung kopi which is often abbreviated as warkop. Kopi tubruk (resembling Turkish coffee) is a common drink in small warkop. To accompany this, traditional kue is also served. The first coffeehouse in Indonesia was founded in 1878 in Jakarta and named Warung Tinggi Tek Sun Ho.

In the Philippines, coffee shop chains like Starbucks have become the prevalent hangouts for upper- and middle-class professionals in such districts as the Makati CBD. However, carinderias (small eateries) continue to serve coffee alongside breakfast and snack dishes. Events called kapihan (fora) are often held inside bakeshops or restaurants that also serve coffee for breakfast or merienda. A number of places often called "cafés" serve not just coffee and pastries but full meals, often international cuisine adapted to Filipino tastes.

Australia

In the 19th century, coffeehouses such as the Federal Coffee Palace in the center of Melbourne were part of the temperance movement.

In modern Australia, coffee shops are commonly called cafés. Since the post-World War II influx of Italian and Greek immigrants introduced the first espresso machines to Australia in the 1950s, there was initially a slow rise in café culture, particularly in Melbourne, until a nationwide boom in locally-owned cafés began in the 1990s. Alongside the rise in the number of cafés has been a rise in demand for locally (or on-site) roasted specialty coffee, particularly in Sydney and Melbourne. A local favorite is the "flat white".

Europe

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, and buns. Many cafés also serve light meals such as sandwiches. European cafés often have tables on the pavement (sidewalk) as well as indoors. Some, particularly in Southern Europe, also serve alcoholic drinks (e.g., wine). In the Netherlands and Belgium, a café is the equivalent of a bar, and also sells alcoholic drinks. In the Netherlands a koffiehuis serves coffee, while a "coffee shop" (the English term) sells "soft" drugs (cannabis and hashish) and is generally not allowed to sell alcoholic drinks. 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 bought 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.

Today, the word café – also spelled cafe, but always pronounced as two syllables – is used for most coffeehouses. It has also come to be used for a type of diner that offers cooked meals (again, without alcoholic beverages) which can be standalone or operating within shopping centres or department stores.

The patrons of the early English coffeehouses were far removed from those of modern Britain. Haunts for teenagers in particular, Italian-run espresso bars and their formica-topped tables were a feature of 1950s Soho that provided a backdrop as well as a title for Cliff Richard's 1960 film Expresso Bongo. The first of these was the Moka in Frith Street, opened by Gina Lollobrigida in 1953. The late 50s Soho cafes in the film have "[an] exotic Gaggia coffee machine ... [and] Coke, Pepsi, weak frothy coffee and a Suncrush orange fountain"; they spread to other urban centers during the 1960s, providing affordable, warm places for young people to congregate and an ambience far removed from the global coffee bar standard set in the final decades of the century by chains such as Starbucks and Pret a Manger.

Espresso bar

The espresso bar is a type of coffeehouse that specializes in coffee drinks made from espresso. Originating in Italy, it has spread throughout the world in various forms. International chains include Starbucks Coffee, based in Seattle, U.S., and Costa Coffee, based in Loudwater, 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 typically has 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 the proliferation of public Wi-Fi access points to provide Internet services to people working on laptop computers.

The offerings at the typical espresso bar are generally quite Italianate in inspiration; biscotti, cannoli and pizzelle are common traditional accompaniments to a caffè latte or cappuccino. Some 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 called a barista. This is a skilled position that requires familiarity with the drinks being made (often very elaborate, especially in North American-style espresso bars) and a reasonable facility with some equipment, as well as the usual customer service skills.