The Very Capitalist History of the American Coffee Break

As noted journalist and caffeine fiend Michael Pollan says on a February 2022 episode of Gastropod, “Capitalism and caffeine are hand in hand. If you want any proof of that, just look at the institution of the coffee break... Your employer not only gives you a free drug at the at the workplace, but gives you a place and time in which to enjoy it twice a day, in most places. Why would employers do that if it didn’t offer them more benefit than cost? And clearly it does. They get more work out of people.”