Coffeehouses Never Change
According to Sidney W, Mintz, the first London coffeehouse was opened by a Turkish merchant in 1652. In his excellent 1985 book Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History, Mintz quotes a late-seventeenth-century French traveler called Mission:
You have all Manner of News there: You have a good Fire, which you may sit by as long as you please: You have a Dish of Coffee, You meet your Friends for the Transaction of Business, and all for a Penny, if you don't care to spend more.
-p. 116. Drummond, J.C. and Wilbraham, A. 1958. The Englishman's food: a history of five centuries of English diet. London: Jonathan Cape.
Sounds like my kind of place. This is the best supporting argument I could ask for to back the thesis that the consumption of coffee has or facilitates a truly inherent social aspect. The quote is on page 111 in Mintz.