The Big Tiny Coffee House Challenge

It’s hard to remember a time when there wasn’t a coffee shop perched on every corner. With the boom of coffee culture in the late 90s, mornings seem unbearable without the support of a caffeine kick. Emulating the cosmopolitan New York lifestyle of shows like Friends, Seinfeld, and Sex and the City, ambiance-inspired cafés that encourage its customer to linger were a big step away from the greasy spoons of yesteryear.

Coffee culture was then further cemented by the emergence of the digital age when workers were freed from their desks and took to working from any coffee shop with a strong WiFi signal and an even stronger Arabica blend. And despite what the US sitcoms would have you believe, Americans are not the biggest coffee drinkers in the world. The Times recently mapped the world according to coffee consumption per capita, with Finland taking the top spot averaging 12 kg of coffee per person per year. Their fellow Scandinavians Norway, Denmark, Iceland, and Sweden all also appearing in the top 10.