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Coffee Shop

The Coffee Shop: How it Became Established in Europe


By definition a coffee shop is an establishment that primarily sells coffee for the consumption by paying customers.

Can we believe that Poland had the first Coffee Shop in Europe? The unproven folklore says that the first coffee shop was started in the late 1600’s by a Pole, Franciszek Jerzy Kulczycki. He is said to have received a hoard of green coffee beans from his King, Jan III Sobieski, who obtained them from the Ottoman Turks he defeated in the Battle of Vienna in 1683.

Skeptics, however, find this story a bit unbelievable… and the date a little too late. Whatever the origins behind it, the coffee shop became all the rage in the Middle East. In the 16th century, coffee shops flourished in Istanbul, Cairo, and Mecca under Ottoman Empire rule.

By comparison, Coffee, arrived a bit later for Europe.

In 1650, the first coffee shop in England was started in Oxford by a “Jacob or Jacobs”, a Turkish Jew resident in the University city.By 1652, London had its first coffee shop, Boston in the American Colony in 1670, and Paris in 1671.

The Café Le Procope, started in Paris in the year 1689, still survives to this day. It was a major focus of the French republicanism period, frequented by revolutionaries, Voltaire and Rousseau.

Another anecdote from European history -- England's Charles II once tried to ban coffee shops as places of rebellion and “where scandalous reports are spread about his Majesty”. But English subjects, undeterred made the coffee shops “the seats of English Liberty.” Meanwhile, the London Stock Exchange used to be an established coffee shop!

The satisfaction that you will get will more than compensate the trouble that you have by being the coffee roaster. Outflank the advertisements and experience for yourself how superb coffee really is.
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