Is coffee just an escape from the daily grind?

New insights have presented themselves to Personnel Today on the peculiar relationship between hybrid working and coffee.

Since the arrival of fancy coffees on these shores in the late 1990s, the beverages’ affects on productivity have been a source of much speculation. Long queues formed at workplaces whose cafes suddenly started to offer lattes, americanos, cappucinos and flat whites. Tea drinkers began to suspect they were having to take up the slack as their colleagues waited patiently in line to await their fancy brews.

Now more of us are working at home, the ubiquitous coffee shop has come into its own, much as it did in the days of Samuel Pepys in the 1650s when coffee made its debut in Britain.

But rather than pop in and out again, apparently, one in four workers in the UK “regularly choose a cafe over their home or office to get the job done.”

Under the hilarious headline “Working latte again?”, Broadband Genie tells us that “Brits are treating coffee shops as their second office, with one in four (23%) working from them at least once a week”.

And apparently, three in five (60%) coffee shop-loving remote workers named Costa Coffee as a favourite place to work, ahead of Starbucks (38%) and Caffè Nero (26%).

So why is Broadband Genie telling us all this? It’s because it wishes to point out that many people work in coffee shops not because of the vibe and the aromas but because of broadband outages.

If we filter (ha ha) this data more precisely we find that three in five workers have suffered a broadband outage at home in the past year, and a quarter (25%) say disruptions to their internet service have prevented them from being able to do their job. So for the 27% who say working in a coffee shop improves their productivity, the reliability of the internet connection plays a big part.

But now we get to the nub of Broadband Genie’s argument. The average Brit, it states, spends over £700 a year in coffee shops – double the typical annual broadband bill. If only workers wouldn’t spend so much on coffee they could afford a better internet connection. Alex Tofts at Broadband Genie, says: “With the average latte setting you back £3.25, the cost of days in a coffee shop can quickly add up. For those looking to save money, there are many ways to improve your broadband connection that are far cheaper than buying a brew.”

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