The café’s role in the social and economic life of cities and rural areas has not really received the attention it deserves. There have been increasing numbers of articles, tweets and documentaries produced about the importance of the street to life in communities over the last fifty years or so, many of them inspired by the work of Jane Jacobs. However, the café – an institution facing the street, and open to it – is at least as important, but has not received the same level of academic or professional attention. After the COVID-19 “sheltering in place” response is over, we will need public venues that deliver the shared intimacy offered by cafés.