A coffee house is more than a place to buy and drink coffee. 

See this NPR story:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=130595037

Excerpt:

Coffeehouse Culture

Johnson also suggests that good ideas don't come from a lone genius working in a lab as often as they come from interactions between geniuses.  Just think of what the coffeehouse did for the Age of Enlightenment.

"People would hang out in this intellectual hub and have these free-floating conversations about all these different interests and passions," Johnson says.

In the 18th century, Benjamin Franklin's own Club of Honest Whigs would meet at the London Coffeehouse in London to shoot around their ideas.

"There should be a plaque to commemorate [that coffeehouse]," Johnson says. "It was really a tremendously generative space. In the book I describe these as 'liquid networks,' where there is … fluidity in the conversation, but it is also a network of different people with different perspectives coming together."