Often – if alone I would read and use a comp.
I like to talk with people – often about collaborative business ideas.
A cafe is neutral, easy to find and you can sit.

Some of the coffee shops in my town are unbelievably noisy for a few minutes here and there and the flow of conversation is cut off while a machine makes noise because we can’t hear each other.

So we go for a walk instead of sitting and being interrupted. we don’t buy another cup and get exercise, get less jittery and save money – over time we use coffee shops less or meet there and go for a walk . the waiting person buys a coffee the second person does not feel the need. Sometimes now we meet at other places and don’t buy anything as it is not a selling place. $120- $200 per month accidentally is saved and I can make all sorts of drinks at home with the savings. Conversations are less caffeine urgent, more gets done and social life gets better…

I go to a little library to read and use free wifi.

All of this makes coffee shops more unpleasant and less warming to my emotional subconscious. Now I only go to coffee shops invited by people who can think of no alternative.

This did not come about by my having a hatred of coffee shops but by a natural unconscious urge to move away from the unpleasant.
If a coffee shop with the Guinness type of coffee and an area for uninterrupted connected conversation existed I would still be there many hours a day – doing my laptop ework and spending about 10% or less of my time talking.

Now I hardly drink coffee and make my own tea – the flavor can’t be duplicated at any of the coffee shops and now I find the stale coffee smell in the cafes rather unpleasant.

A good coffee dealer with a quiet coffee shop can make good money and keep their clientelle – but not me any more.
Noise ruined my coffee drinking – saves me $200+ per month.

Loss and gain
The businesses of response and reaction.
Who wins ?
Who loses?
Who justifies?
Who changes?

When I was in grad school I lived in a coffee shop. I would get so annoyed when a class would come over and take over the whole place. Usually it was an intro German class that was supposed to meet there for conversation or something. Not only did they take up all the tables, not only did many of them not buy anything, not only would they re-arrange their tables so that I could not get out of my seat in the corner, not only did they not put the tables back after they were done with them or bus their own tables like everyone else, …they also spoke loud German with horrible accents.

It’s bad enough to have loud, annoying conversation going on inches from your head. It’s far worse when you have to stop yourself from correcting their pronouncation or from supplying the words they are struggling to find. Yeah, that was a decade ago. I’m still annoyed. 🙂

conclusion: fast, quiet, cheap pick any two.

P.S. James Hanley, you can shove your classist attitude where the sun don’t shine.

The walls, floor, and ceiling of the Caribou are all made of sound-bouncy materials.

This. I absolutely fucking hate it. When did it become fashionable for bars and coffee shops to have such horribly bright acoustic environments? I have a hard enough time filtering conversation from background noise at the best of times, but in these places, I might as well be inside a hermetically-sealed bubble of pure noise. It’s horrible.

that is what makes the coffee shop work. Well put.