Today, when you think of a coffee shop, it’s usually a Starbucks that comes to mind because they are so prevalent in many cities around the world. The concept of the coffee shop, however, actually began hundreds of years ago.

The first record of a public place serving coffee is in 1475 in the city of Constantinople, Turkey. Now known as Istanbul, Constantinople was a city full of coffee lovers. Coffee was an extremely important part of daily life, and the brew served there was Turkish coffee, which is a very strong coffee served black and unfiltered.

Around 1529, coffee houses began to appear in Europe and spread throughout the continent, gaining a strong foothold in England where they became a popular meeting place for upper-class businessmen. With the colonization of America, coffee shops soon followed and many important deals were brokered over cups of coffee. In fact, the Tontine Coffee House in New York City was the original location of the New York Stock Exchange due to the amount of business being conducted there.

Today, more than 400 billion cups of coffee are consumed each year, many of them in coffee shops around the world. Whether you are interested in an old style Vienna coffee house or the modern equivalent, a Starbucks with free wireless access, the basic concept remains the same.

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