I lived for close to four years in South Korea, working mostly from inside cafés and often spending an entire work day inside them. There were plenty that were set up for this - they often catered a student crowd that would hang out there for long durations studying (quite a few had open for 24 hours, too). It meant the drink prices were quite high since it was basically rent for a seat.

Alternatively some dedicated study cafes would require a flat fee for a time duration and make drinks cheap instead.

It was also fairly common to leave laptops plugged in and leave for half an hour to grab a meal elsewhere and come back.

It boils down to economics and custom.

A few years ago, travelling in the US we, a group of European exchange students) I remember well how we were after lunch or dinner almost thrown out of restaurants by servers (i.e. brought the bill without having asked for it, etc.). I remember it so well because it really felt rude to me (we were not really hanging around unduly and might at times have ordered a round of deserts with a small break after the meal which the business then lost but that is another story).

Of course from a business perspective its better to get 3 parties to have lunch on a table than 2, and esp. in the US with the enormous tips (and lowered minimum wage) for servers, there are strong incentives for that kind of behaviour. Ultimately landlords/markets also factor this in when setting rent prices for restaurant spaces.

So to come back to the Kaffeehause-style establishments I always wonder how they were economically viable back then. Probably a combination of cheap labor, people spending quite a lot potentially in the Kaffeehaus [studying math, I guess they just rented a room (potentially not even heated) and not an apartment, then socialised outside or in cafes].

I think to pull off a Kaffeehaus for hanging out today it would probably work out more in a 'Club' model where you pay a membership fee which allows for stable operation.

There's many things that seen to have been economically viable a hundred years ago, which would seem crazy today. For example, houses with 4m high roofs, thick, stable walls and stucco.

Or maybe it was economically just as little viable as it is today, but people just didn't think that much about economical viability back in the old days?

My grandmother grew up in a hut, every weekend it would be swept out with fresh sand, because it had a stomped mud floor. This was in Germany. Pretty sure the local gentry had these stucco ceilings, but not everyone.

Pretty sure a lot of what was done wasn't done with as tight calculations as it is done today. On the other hand, the markets weren't as unforgiven as today so it might have been easier to turn an investment into a profit.

It would be interesting to see the bookwork (if it even existed in the first place) of the Scottish Café, with supplemental informations by economists / historians putting it into perspective

You would have to look for places in quieter parts of a city, smaller streets, not high-traffic or touristy. It's actually not that difficult to find these in Paris, place where you can know the owner and hang out (you still pay of course). You have to start slowly, you don't come in the first day, drink a coffee and stay 4 hours with friends, you have to build the relationship with the place: come a few times, begin to know the place, the waiter, the owner, ... and after some time you might be recognised as friend and the place will be a nice spot.

There are lots of places where someone can show up and get work done. University students will know a few places, on and around the campus.

I just can't think of a collaborative space where like-minded souls collide, aside from perhaps hacker spaces. Is there anything like those Paris cafés where seemingly all famous artists went and drank together?

I'm confused...What you're asking for is a café? There are a lot of places like that.

Yes, but there is this annoying rule that you have to order drinks every once in an unspecified while.

Do you think the patrons of this cafe didn't? I am sure they were expected to provide some degree of patronage for their time there.

In Vienna they will let you sit for hours on a cup of coffee.

It's one of the reasons I was glad for the Union Society at my university. You had to be a member of the university, and then pay to join, so not exactly a public place, but it was great for this sort of thing. There were many occasions where we'd grab a light lunch there, spend a good 4 or 5 hours working on things together, then grab a pizza from a place just down the road to bring back[1]. It then had a bar that opened at 6, so you could have a few drinks before heading home.

You could do much the same in the local Starbucks, but the noise and how busy it was made it a bad place to work. The Union was generally quiet (and had an on-site library if you needed it), which was ideal. We also had a few supervisions in local pubs, but they'd generally only last an hour which sidestepped the drinking/taking up a table without buying drinks issues.

There were of course study spaces we could have used in college, but not having to worry about disturbing people as you were discussing things (as most people there weren't working) and having drinks/hot food available made it a much nicer place to work.

[1] Which you weren't really meant to do given they were selling food, but the staff let us get away with it.

Rural family restaurants can handle this - or any place where you get outside of “heavy traffic” - just ask! As long as the table would have been empty anyway it doesn’t cost them extra - or leave a generous tip.

One restaurant near me even has a plaque commemorating the group who has been eating lunch there for twenty years.

You have the wrong associations. What are you looking for is a place where drinking alcohol and smoking is not frowned upon.

The traditional café is exactly what they're looking for: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coffeehouse

At least in Austria and Germany there are lots of places like that.

It probably depends on the city. My fiance who is in Singapore saw this article and mentioned on one occasion she was trying to work in a Starbucks with a classmate and they were asked to leave to make room for other customers. Singapore feels like a pretty crowded city though, many of the public spaces like the library are usually fully booked.

Folks can argue about the coffee quality as much as they want, but this why I love the Starbucks reserve roastery in Seattle. Decent chairs you can sit in for hours on end, and they blast AC in the summer. Noisy though.