@Kainsmasquerade The rationale behind this is that before coffee arrived to Europe, most people drank beer and other alcoholic beverages (due to water being unsuited for consumption). Tea but to a larger extent coffee grew into popularity as an alternative to beer. And where alcohol has alot of negative effets such as violence, coffee makes people focus and discuss instead of brawl.
So a lot of coffee shops sprung up, replacing taverns and bars, and became popular meeting spots for the intellectual elite. It's in the cafees where Voltaire and his gang (rumour has it Voltire drank 40 cups of coffee every day) met to discuss what would be the foundation for the enlightenment and the western way of life.
And as an interesting sidenote, I find it quite interesting that its after the introduction of coffee that we start to see giant leaps of technology, while the technology progress had been extremely slow for thousands of years before. In a couple of hundred years we have trains, cars, aeroplanes, United Nations, space rockets, submarines and much more. it's interesting what potential humans has when we discuss and cooperate instead of fights.