page_title: Coffee
section_title: Coffeehouses
hierarchical_section_title: Coffee / Coffeehouses
caption_attribution_description: Scene de Café au Caire Egypte
context_page_description: Coffee is a brewed drink prepared from roasted coffee beans, the seeds of berries from certain Coffea species. When coffee berries turn from green to bright red in color – indicating ripeness – they are picked, processed, and dried. Dried coffee seeds are roasted to varying degrees, depending on the desired flavor. Roasted beans are ground and then brewed with near-boiling water to produce the beverage known as coffee.
  Coffee is darkly colored, bitter, slightly acidic and has a stimulating effect in humans, primarily due to its caffeine content. It is one of the most popular drinks in the world, and can be prepared and presented in a variety of ways. It is usually served hot, although iced coffee is common.
  Clinical research indicates that moderate coffee consumption is benign or mildly beneficial as a stimulant in healthy adults, with continuing research on whether long-term consumption reduces the risk of some diseases, although some of the long-term studies are of questionable credibility.
context_section_description: Widely known as coffeehouses or cafés, establishments serving prepared coffee or other hot beverages have existed for over five hundred years. Coffeehouses in Mecca became a concern as places for political gatherings to the imams who banned them, and the drink, for Muslims between 1512 and 1524. In 1530 the first coffeehouse was opened in Damascus. The first coffeehouse in Constantinople was opened in 1475 by traders arriving from Damascus and Aleppo. Soon after, coffeehouses became part of the Ottoman culture, spreading rapidly to all regions of the Ottoman Empire.
  In the 17th century, coffee appeared for the first time in Europe outside the Ottoman Empire, and coffeehouses were established and quickly became popular. The first coffeehouses in Western Europe appeared in Venice, as a result of the traffic between La Serenissima and the Ottomans; the very first one is recorded in 1645. The first coffeehouse in England was set up in Oxford in 1650 by a Jewish man named Jacob in the building now known as "The Grand Cafe". A plaque on the wall still commemorates this and the cafe is now a cocktail bar. By 1675, there were more than 3,000 coffeehouses in England.
  A legend says that after the second Turkish siege of Vienna in 1683, the Viennese discovered many bags of coffee in the abandoned Ottoman encampment. Using this captured stock, a Polish soldier named Kulczycki opened the first coffeehouse in Vienna. This story never happened. Nowadays it is proven that the first coffeehouse in Vienna was opened by the Armenian Johannes Theodat in 1685.
  In 1672 an Armenian named Pascal established a coffee stall in Paris that was ultimately unsuccessful and the city had to wait until 1689 for its first coffeehouse when Procopio Cutò opened the Café Procope. This coffeehouse still exists today and was a major meeting place of the French Enlightenment; Voltaire, Rousseau, and Denis Diderot frequented it, and it is arguably the birthplace of the Encyclopédie, the first modern encyclopedia.  America had its first coffeehouse in Boston, in 1676. Coffee, tea and beer were often served together in establishments which functioned both as coffeehouses and taverns; one such was the Green Dragon in Boston, where John Adams, James Otis, and Paul Revere planned rebellion.
  The modern steamless espresso machine was invented in Milan, Italy, in 1938 by Achille Gaggia, and from there spread in coffeehouses and restaurants across Italy and the rest of Europe in the early 1950s. An Italian named Pino Riservato opened the first espresso bar, the Moka Bar, in Soho in 1952, and there were 400 such bars in London alone by 1956. Cappucino was particularly popular among English drinkers. Similarly in the United States, the espresso craze spread. North Beach in San Francisco saw the opening of the Caffe Trieste in 1957, which served Beat Generation poets such as Allen Ginsberg and Bob Kaufman alongside Italian immigrants. Similar such cafes existed in Greenwich Village and elsewhere.
  The first Peet's Coffee & Tea store opened in 1966 in Berkeley, California by Dutch native Alfred Peet. He chose to focus on roasting batches with fresher, higher quality seeds than was the norm at the time. He was a trainer and supplier to the founders of Starbucks.
  The American coffeehouse chain Starbucks, which began as a modest business roasting and selling coffee beans in 1971, was founded by three college students, Jerry Baldwin, Gordon Bowker, and Zev Siegl. The first store opened on March 30, 1971 at the Pike Place Market in Seattle, followed by a second and third over the next two years. Entrepreneur Howard Schultz joined the company in 1982 as Director of Retail Operations and Marketing, and pushed to sell premade espresso coffee. The others were reluctant, but Schultz opened Il Giornale in Seattle in April 1986. He bought the other owners out in March 1987 and pushed on with plans to expand—from 1987 to the end of 1991, the chain (rebranded from Il Giornale to Starbucks) expanded to over 100 outlets. The company has 25,000 stores in over 75 countries worldwide.
  South Ko
caption: A coffeehouse in Cairo, 18th century
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