A coffee shop is not a bad place to do deep focus work like writing, but you can’t do business calls there. There is too much background noise, the environment isn’t businesslike, you come across as unserious.
I don’t know of any cafes which provide soundproofed phone booths. They wouldn’t make sense, given that the business is really about selling food.
So why not have standalone businesses which provide public phone booths? There would be a glass door. They would be soundproofed. There would be Internet for video calls. The provider would charge by the minute.
What does coworking have over cafes, anyway? Apart from phone booths, how is WeWork really better than Peets?
Coworking might be more socially awkward than cafeworking. Maybe only for me, or maybe that’s a feature for some, ie better. I don’t know why some cafes couldn’t add a phone booth or two with separately paid access. Or cities or BIDs… https://improveverywhere.com/2018/11/13/phone-booth-coworking/
I have wondered why so many people work in cafes instead of coworking. When I do it myself it’s an inability to commit. I like the variety of cafes. But then again I also like coworking and have done it a lot.
Except WeWork. Something about them bugs me. The WeWork Street riff works so well because you can almost believe it.