Coffee, WiFi, and inspiration
September 4th, 2006 (9:50pm) Niall Kennedy 28 CommentsTweet This
Local cafes can provide a strong dose of caffeine, free WiFi, and power to help you write, code, or troubleshoot. The best cafes have comfortable tables, quality coffee and espresso, and talented baristas.
The west cost of the United States is lucky to have quality work-friendly cafes. Below are my favorite work spots from Seattle to San Francisco.
Espresso Vivace Alley 24 in Seattle combines famous espresso with over 2000 square feet of work space. The staff is friendly and the manager Brian is very friendly to the beduin office crowd by providing both sweet and savory food items. Espresso Vivace even has a small glass-enclosed room in the back for extra quiet while surrounded by available power outlets. Parking is ample, and I-5 is just a few blocks away to take you to your next meeting.
Stumptown Coffee Roasters in Portland imports some of the best coffee beans available including a few Cup of Excellence winners prepared in a $8000 Clover single cup coffee brewer. I enjoy the exposed brick walls and the variety of local non-coffee drinks available such as Jones Soda.
Tip: All espresso drinks are priced as single shots, so be sure to up your dosage as you order larger-sized drinks.
Ritual Coffee Roasters in San Francisco was designed as a laptop-friendly cafe for coffee aficionados. The 1000 square-foot space has power outlets at every table, two wireless access points. The coffee is flown in several times a week from Stumptown Coffee Roasters and prepared by award-winning professional baristas.
Tip: T-Mobile customers have reported weak cellphone reception within the cafe. Power outlets are turned off on the weekend to allow higher turnover.
Web Work 101: How To Escape The Cubicle
Great idea guys. The mobile office is now, more than ever becoming a reallity. How about featuring more about the tools needed for a virtual office like:
1) Online Workforce Collaboration Suites, do they work? who uses them?
2) Hosted PBX Vendor comparison
3) Online video conference/ workspace sharing tools, are they usefull?
What’s with the summary feed, which doesn’t even indicate it’s a summary feed with a parenthesis? Please turn on full-text feeds, thanks!
Coffee? Here in Glasgow we have Wi-Fi pubs!
(Not hugely conducive to high productivity though!)
There is no link for “Ritual Coffee Roasters”?
The excellent group Wireless Toronto has gone around setting up free wi-fi connections in cafes across Toronto. If anyone is ever up north here in the city, their map is definitely worth checking out.
Niall and Om,
This is begging to be blown up into something much bigger like “Web Worker Daily Rated” — 1-3 stars like Michelin. Signal Strength, Coffee Quality, Hipster Factor.
I agree with Narendra. I could see this leading to a ratings system for wifi coffeehouses.
With that, I’d like to put my vote in for Ritual. I love that cafe, and I spend a fair amount of time working on my laptop there.
Wow! Someone finally got something right. Vivace is far and away some of the best coffee to be had in Seattle; a city full of coffee houses. Thanks for not mentioning Starbucks!
Finding a good coffee shop in Seattle is not challenging – between Top Pot, Victrola, Vivace, Vita, Joe Bar, Bauhaus, Fuel, and the rest it’s difficult *not* to find a place suited to working. Not even going to mention the central library.
Find me a decent spot in Manhattan and I’ll be impressed. The locals here haven’t quite figured it out.
Coutorture,
Rumor is Intelligentsia Coffee Roasters may soon have a Manhattan location. I’ve heard good things about the new Juan Valdez Cafe on 57th near Park Ave. but I’ve never been.
Need to add a plug for my fav spot… Notes from Underground at Van Ness and Green in SF.
Niall and Om
Congratulations on Web Worker Daily, I like the tone and the design.
I wrote about Ritual Coffee Roasters a while back on ‘Serge the Concierge’.
I might include your piece in a new coffee flavored post later this week.
Have a good day
Serge
Biz:
http://www.njconcierges.com
Blog:
http://www.sergetheconcierge.com
Two other great ones in NE Portland are Extracto and Concordia Coffee House. Both have excellent espresso and free wi-fi. I get most of my work done at those two places.
Going a little east from California, I bring you Arizona Coffee which has a huge list of all of the coffee shops in Arizona with free wireless internet. I run the site and this is shameless self promotion. But I dig this webworkerdaily and I’m gonna subscribe to the rss feed.
And a little further east… Cafe Coco in Nashville, TN, has good coffee, open 24 hrs, funky atmosphere, and usually several people hanging out / working until all hours! It gets my five stars!
Two things: one, I can’t read most of this because it’s grey text on black (I’m on firefox 1.03, PC – xp
two, was just at RRoasters, and the wireless has improved magnificently. Yes, the powerplug thing on weekends (just sat & sun) does limit you to your battery + spare life.
great new blog Om!
How about a location list for silicon valley?
At home or not, coffee is the unofficial official fuel of choice for the “Non-traditional” worker.
There’s still 19 percent of us Americans making it at home, though.
But then, I never get the froth quite right.
We order coffee through the web and prefer Javaberry now. It’s simply good quality coffee with nice smooth taste. As far as I know the secret of this famous coffee is a procedure of roasting. A producer follows the ancient recipe and uses the modern equipment.
Nice few cafes listed there, for a few more in New York, London, Sydney and Melbourne check out this site listing free wifi and power ready laptop friendly cafes:
http://www.laptopfriendlycafes.com
enjoy!
Cr@iG