do we know how to hang out without making it a production?

on the recent epidemic of cafés at home.

Perhaps you saw it on TikTok: steam curling from a Breville Barista Pro, handwritten menu on butcher paper, an indie jazz playlist humming in the background. Or maybe the invite came via Partiful: “Café @ mine, 10am. Lattes, pastries, good vibes.” Opening your apartment on a weekend morning and calling it a “cafe” has become a trend.

But why do we call it a cafe? Why not just say, “Come over”?

I’ll admit – when I first saw this trend, I was skeptical. Honestly, it’s funny that we have to attach a commercial wrapper to justify having friends over on a Sunday morning.

But having a cafe at home isn’t just about the coffee—it offers a script. It says: I’ve made space for you here.

Priya Parker, in The Art of Gathering, reminds us that good hosting is rooted in purpose: “Take the reasons you think you are gathering... and keep drilling below them.” Calling your home a “café” might seem tongue-in-cheek, but it’s a clever social cue. It gives structure without pressure, and turns a casual invite into something that feels considered.

Creator credits (L-R): @cristinaviseu, @itsecclesia, @mxchaelhe, @thehealthyavo

Hospitality stripped down to its essentials. For a generation that doesn’t always cook but has mastered the weekend microfoam, the home café is a low-lift, high-reward format. You’re not hosting a dinner party; you’re making a latte and slicing some banana bread. But it still feels generous.

It’s also specific. Light a candle, print a little menu, froth milk for a friend. You’ve already elevated it beyond the default “coffee catch-up” on the corner. You’re not just meeting up—you’re hosting.

There’s a kind of clarity in the format. There will be drinks. Maybe pastries. A loose start and end time. There are even implied roles: you’re the “barista,” they’re the “guest.” It’s roleplay with a splash of capitalism, but in the gentlest way. It creates a framework that helps people feel cared for.

Turning our homes into cafés is how a generation craving connection, time, and intimacy is reinventing hospitality—less as performance, more as ritual—using the aesthetics of the coffee shop to fill the void left by vanishing third places and over-optimized social lives.

The coffee shop is perhaps the last widely understood “third place”—a concept coined by sociologist Ray Oldenburg to describe spaces that aren’t home or work, but where community forms organically. Libraries, bars, stoops, diners. Places where you can simply exist.

But many of those places are disappearing—priced out, zoned out, or made inhospitable. As Jenny Odell writes in How to Do Nothing, “True public spaces... are places for—and thus the spatial underpinnings of—‘what we will.’ A public, noncommercial space demands nothing from you in order for you to enter, nor for you to stay.”

Home cafés, in contrast, ask only that you come over. And maybe that’s why they work. Coffee shops have increasingly become utilitarian—coworking spaces with lattes. Even former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz once lamented how mobile ordering stripped away the communal feel. Starbucks became a caffeine distribution system, not a neighborhood hangout.

At the same time, everything else in our lives got optimized. As Anne Helen Petersen writes, “Why am I burned out? Because I've internalized the idea that I should be working all the time.” When time is monetized and social plans are spreadsheets, hanging out—just to hang out—feels subversive.

Friendships feel professionalized. Catch-up calls are scheduled with links. Someone sends a Calendly in a non-work context (guilty).

One lesson I keep learning is that my day-to-day life is not immune to the generational trends, of, well, simply just aging and living in a society. In my late 20s, the professionalization of friendship collides with the reality that many of my closest friends now live elsewhere. Same for them! Our catch-up calls are peppered with laments about how hard it is to make friends in a new city. And after we hang up—after all the hand-wringing—I’m left feeling like a minnow in the larger generational wave of loneliness.

But I think the answer to how we cure our loneliness epidemic at large lies in how we open our own doors to others.

Rosie Spinks

, in her essay Keep Coming Back, gets to the heart of it of building community: “You just have to keep showing up.” But, she asks, show up where?

Her answer is deceptively simple: the best spaces for connection are free or low-cost, recurring, local, and anchored in something shared—whether that’s a hobby, a place, or a pot of soup. A Sunday morning café at home checks all those boxes.

When I lived in San Francisco, I started hosting Sunday salons: open hours where friends, roommates, and the occasional rando dropped by to write, journal, or do life admin. People sprawled across my living room, sharing tea and stories. The vibe was quiet, creative, unforced.

I started Sunday salons because one-on-one hangouts felt exhausting to coordinate—but I still wanted to see people. In my San Francisco-addled-optimization-brain, I thought it made most sense to just invite anyone I liked or wanted to get to know better over to my house and work on something that was not-work. After all, so many of my deepest friendships required parallel play, long spaces of time, and something to discuss beyond ourselves and our jobs.

I look back on Sunday salons with extreme fondness. I definitely felt vulnerable trying something with a different format (I now realize I invented a coworking space at home ) and open to anyone — connection requires vulnerability!

After moving to Ann Arbor, I’ve been looking for new rhythms. I’m not sure if the demographics & culture here necessarily vibe with a Sunday salon. (More on this and my journey to not fall into the grad-student-SO-in-a-college-town trap in a later post..) but here are a few rituals that have inspired me:

• My friend

  Parisa Soraya
  ’s weekly writing circle. She creates the kind of space where time slows down: soft snacks, tea, and pomodoro timers guiding bursts of creativity.

• Amanda Litman
  ’s standing Saturday dinners. My partner and I are trying out our own version—same time, same table, whoever’s around.

• Coffee Outside, a movement in the cycling community dedicated to one thing: drinking coffee outside, together.

• Cookbook clubs. Food is the common thread, always.

None of these are new ideas. But that’s what makes them work. They remind us how to build the communal muscle of showing up.

So: café at my place, next Sunday morning. You’re invited.