coffee (n.)

"coffee-house, restaurant," 1802, from French café "coffee, coffeehouse," from Italian caffe "coffee" (see coffee).

The beverage was introduced in Venice by 1615 and in France by 1650s by merchants and travelers who had been to Turkey and Egypt. The first public European café might have been one opened in Marseilles in 1660. Cafe society "people who frequent fashionable dining spots, night-clubs, etc." is from 1922.

1839, "cafe," American English, from Mexican Spanish cafeteria "coffee store," from café "coffee" (see coffee) + Spanish -tería "place where something is done" (usually business). The sense shifted by 1890s to "self-service dining establishment." The ending came to be understood popularly as meaning "help-yourself" and was extended to new formation with that sense from c. 1923.

Examples of the thing itself date to 1885, but they seem to have become established first in Chicago in the early 1890s by social and philanthropic organizations (such as the YWCA) to offer working girls affordable, fast, light meals in a congenial atmosphere. Their popularity waned after c. 1926, eclipsed by coffee shops, lunch counters, and sandwich shops. Industrial plants began to add them in 1915; schools and colleges followed.