Coffee drinkers in urban shops are more likely to be younger than those who frequent more rural coffee shops.
Although both urban and rural coffee shop goers are more likely to be there for social or emotional reasons, a large percentage of those in big city coffee shops are there for practical reasons, like grabbing a quick cup ‘a joe or doing work.
That information comes from a research project conducted by first year Monmouth College student Stephanie Saey and sophomore Kelci Foss in the SOFIA program.
SOFIA, or Summer Opportunity for Intellectual Activities, takes an incoming freshman and a returning student and teams them up with a professor — this case Kristin Larson — to conduct research during the three weeks before classes start.
Larson tells Galesburg’s Morning News on WGIL she came up with the topic, but the students took over from there.
“I knew that I wanted to do some research related to how familiar places impact our well being,” Larson says, “and so, when the students came in, I really allowed them to grasp the project, grasp the idea and then come up with how they would research this.”
Saey’s and Foss’s research took them to InnKeepers in Galesburg for rural research and Dollop coffee shop in Chicago for an urban setting.
