Working In While Eating Out: The Evolution of Doing Business While Dining

When our ancestors were peasants in the earliest days of agriculture, the daily schedule was: work in field all day, eat midday meal in field, continue working in field.

Today, after centuries of human advancement, it goes something like: work in coffee shop all day, buy and each lunch there, continue toiling away on laptop until the sun sets.

Though it may seem like the tech boom and gig economy ushered in this modern mobile work style, working and dining have always been intertwined.

Now they're entangled in lunch meetings, coffee networking dates, and independent workers using neighborhood eateries as offices. And, in major cities like New York, Washington D.C., Sydney and Hong Kong, restaurants are converting into official co-working spaces during off-peak hours.

The historical relationship between these cultural practices — from trade at ancient marketplaces, to mercantile "coffee houses," to the iconic three-martini lunches of the 1950s and 60s — can shed light on exactly how we got to where we are now.