If you’re motivated by being in the company of people who are being very productive, try working at Rivers and Roads in Edgewater. Its proximity to Loyola University means that it’s common to find students studying, working on group projects, and breaking the record for most words typed per minute. They have some great pastries and bagels from Edgewater bakery, Edge of Sweetness, as well as giant cookies from Bake Me Wild.

​​This casual Croatian cafe has become our favorite place to get some work done in River North. It’s not just because Doma is quiet, has strong WiFi, a cute side patio, and a soothing Scandinavian furniture store aesthetic. No, it’s also because the food is excellent. It’s open for breakfast and lunch, and the menu has dishes like a must-order ćevapi wrapped in fluffy flatbread with clotted cream and a roasted pepper spread, a spicy breakfast sandwich, tasty soups, and pastries.

With plenty of tables, outlets, and a fairly quiet atmosphere, Pedestrian Coffee in Lakeview is fully equipped for getting sh*t done. Their long tables provide enough space for groups to spread out, while smaller ones are perfect for solo work when you realize your couch isn’t ideal for productivity. They have some pastries to snack on, but their location is also so close to spots like Taipei Cafe, Zaza’s Pizzeria, and Bop N Grill.

We’re big fans of Hexe, a large, industrial-feeling coffee shop located in a section of Roscoe Village. There’s nothing this place doesn’t do well—along with great coffee and a ton of space to work, Hexe also has outstanding pastries, friendly staff, a fantastic patio, and serves alcohol. Come for work during the day, then stay and meet friends here for drinks at night. Honestly, you might as well sleep here while you’re at it.

Vigo Coffee may seem low-key, but it high key wants you to be productive. This Lincoln Park coffee shop has strong wifi, big windows letting in tons of natural light, and a quiet semi-private conference room you can reserve (for free) for your next Zoom 1-on-1. The coffee is decent, and there are beautifully laminated croissants plus chilaquiles and avocado toast to snack on. Despite all this—and the fact that it’s open until 5pm—Vigo Coffee is rarely crowded.

Is this technically a coffee shop? No, it’s more of an all-day restaurant attached to a Restoration Hardware in the Gold Coast. In fact, it’s more of a tree-filled biodome large enough to have its own ecosystem. Three Arts Club Cafe is so spacious it’ll feel like you’re working outside, but it’s a great temperature-controlled place to get some work done while being surrounded by foliage and expensive furniture.

Andersonville is a pretty neighborhood with cute boutiques where people always seem to be shopping in the middle of the day. While these people apparently have no bosses to report to, you might. And if that’s the case, you need to know about La Colombe. This coffee shop has no distractions, and plenty of tables meant for individuals. In other words, its sole purpose seems to be helping people get work done. Just know they turn the WiFi off on Saturdays and Sundays.

Not only does Heritage Bicycles serve excellent coffee in a sunlit space, but they’ll also fix your bicycle or custom-make you a new one. (We don’t know how long it takes to make a bike, but you can probably finish at least one chapter of your autobiography while you’re waiting.) Even if you don’t need their bicycle services, you can still come here and get some work done at the large communal table in the middle of the coffee shop, or at the counter by the window.

The Intelligentsia in Lakeview is very busy, so getting a seat can be tricky. But if you’ve been working from home and haven’t talked to a real person in three weeks, it’s worth a try. Snag a spot at one of the large back tables and you won’t feel claustrophobic, even when the cafe is full of people. It’s a gentle way to ease back into human interaction.

The Coffee Studio isn’t as tiny as the studio apartment you lived in when you first moved to the city, but it’s still pretty small. That makes it cozy - it has the feel of a shared workspace, with brick walls, wooden tables, and a couple of plants to lighten the mood. There’s no shortage of coffee, food, or outlets, either.

Osmium is one of the spots owned by Dark Matter Coffee, a local coffee company that roasts its own beans. Inside, this cafe has a number of tables along one side and a coffee bar on the other, adding up to plenty of space for working. There’s also a patio outside, but you’ll probably want to sit indoors where you can gaze at the artwork on the wall and wonder to yourself whether Salvador Dali painted it in a little-known steampunk phase.

Dollop is our go-to coffee shop when we need to get work done in Streeterville. There are plenty of places to sit, and floor-to-ceiling windows that make the space bright and allow a nice view of the neighborhood. Grab a donut or pastry while you’re there.

This is a much-hyped coffee chain from the Bay Area with a focus on pour-over coffee, so seek them out when high-maintenance caffeine is the only thing that’ll help you be your most productive self. The Wolf Point location has other coffee drinks (like the chicory-heavy iced NOLA) and a few pastries, but the real draw is a large patio overlooking the river. Inside, there’s plenty of seating spread out across multiple rooms, wifi, and quiet jazz to help make your work more tolerable.

By night, Daisies is a great vegetable-focused restaurant. But during the day, this Logan Square spot morphs into a very useful cafe. The coffee bar is open until 3pm everyday (even Monday when the restaurant is closed for dinner service), has tons of tables, and serves things like oat milk lattes on draft. There’s a rotating variety of fresh pastries like a very tasty lemon and cheese danish braid, and a mini grocery fridge stocked with beer and wine.

Cafe Mustache is a Logan Square spot for people who need a funky place to sit and do things. There are plenty of mismatched tables and chairs, plus more than a few pieces of mustache artwork. Just know that the WiFi is turned off at 6pm, when this place becomes more of a local bar than a coffee shop.

If quality food is as much on your mind as a cup of coffee and all the TPS reports you need to finish, then head over to Gaslight in Logan Square. This place has a full food menu (with omelettes, sandwiches, and pastries), so you can take a break and have a real meal. The large space is comfortable enough that you can easily spend a whole day here, too.

Coffee Lab & Roasters in Lakeview takes their coffee seriously. They roast their coffee and espresso on-site, and offer a variety of specialty drinks like Kyoto-style cold brew or a pear-and-yuzu latte if straight-up black coffee isn’t your speed—though it is exceptionally smooth and low on bitterness. We wouldn’t recommend posting up with a laptop unless you can handle sitting on benches for long stretches of time.

Good Ambler is a bakery and cafe in the West Loop that’s ideal for a number of situations. For one thing, the space is huge and open seven days a week. You can come here solo, grab a seat at one of their little tables, and get some work done in a place that isn’t your apartment. Or, settle in with a group on one of the couches. Either way, you can count on having great wifi, an outlet, and eating something that’s absolutely delicious—they have cookies, pastries, and sandwiches.

It’s not the largest spot on this list, but Vietfive in the West Loop is one of our favorite places to sit with our laptops for a few hours. This little Vietnamese coffee shop is light and bright, has an energetic hip hop playlist, and friendly baristas. They also have a smooshy couch for chilling, and about five round tables that are the perfect size for holding your computer, snacks, multiple drinks, and soon-to-be-realized dreams of becoming a published author.

You’ve secretly wanted a cozy recliner, but invested in a responsible ergonomic swivel chair instead. For a change of pace, head over to Froth. This coffee shop in the West Loop (like a lot of spots that opened in 2020) seemingly appeared out of nowhere. But we’re very glad it did because it’s not super crowded, and full of soft chairs and couches that makes it perfect to settle in, relax, and get some work done. Plus, there’s a food menu of sandwiches and salads, and a large outdoor patio.

Swadesi has all the components of an ideal West Loop cafe where you can get work done: plenty of coffee, free wifi, printing capabilities, and big windows so you don’t feel like a mushroom after hour three of “per my last email.” And even if the sweet baked goods don't feel representative of the precision and talents of Swadesi's sibling spots, Indienne and Sifr, the savory options are pretty good.

Sawada is a coffee shop that’s attached to Green Street Smoked Meats. This means you can take a BBQ break for lunch, and even use the picnic benches and stadium seating in the back of Green Street to do work early in the day. Before you come here, just decide whether or not eating BBQ will ultimately help your productivity.

Cafe Jumping Bean is a neighborhood institution that’s been around since 1994. It’s colorful, with lots of local artwork, and is always a popular spot for coffee, pastries, and sandwiches. Come here to study, or finish that soul-sucking spreadsheet in a bright space that will cheer you up. And after you do, try their Mexican hot chocolate and a mollete topped with refried beans, cheese, salsa, and avocado to celebrate.

This fantastic cafe in Pilsen seems like it was made specifically for the work-anywhere-but-the-office set. Not only does La Malinche serve great coffee and tasty sandwiches, crepes, and breakfast dishes like chilaquiles, it’s also fully equipped with wifi, plenty of outlets, and even a printer. It’s the kind of relaxed space where you can come to work alone, or with a small group while downing delicious café de olla out of terracotta mugs.

If Randolph Street is Restaurant Row, then this stretch of Milwaukee Ave. is the Coffee Canopy. Just north of Caffe Streets and The Wormhole, you’ll find Brü. Not only is it a great place to get some work done, but there’s a separate shared work space, too. It’s basically the coffee house equivalent of a WeWork, but free and with events like art classes and movie nights.

The Wormhole has a DeLorean time machine (a.k.a. the car/time travel device from Back to the Future) hanging from its ceiling, and that’s reason enough for us to come here. The whole theme of this place is, fittingly, “back in time and stuff,” which makes you feel like you’re sitting in your bedroom at your parents’ house doing fifth grade homework. Way better than sitting in a tiny cubicle writing up your expenses, right?

Standing Passengers is a great spot for getting work done—and for avoiding said work. This West Town coffee shop is open until 7pm, there’s strong wifi, plenty of outlets, and a long menu of flavored coffee drinks (like a blueberry pancake latte) to fuel your inbox zero quest. Want to ignore all those post-5pm Slack messages instead? There’s vintage Nintendo to play and old movies to watch while you lounge in worn leather couches.

If you’re looking for a new coffee shop where you can finish your thesis and listen to some live music, Afro Joe’s in Beverly has you covered. Along with coffee drinks, they also have pastries and breakfast sandwiches, as well as soups, salads, and wraps. And they frequently host events—whether music, poetry slams, or an open mic night—after the coffee shop closes.

When you just need a comfortable place to work for a few hours, go yo Kusanya in Englewood. This place wants you to sit and stay awhile—it literally says so on its website. It’s a pretty standard cafe set-up, with lots of little tables and WiFi, and all the food costs $2-$5—dishes like baked oatmeal, grits (you choose either sweet or savory), and the Tuna Turner sandwich, which is just fun to say. And if you do end up staying all day, they frequently host community events.

If you’ve ever spent time in a coffee shop on a college campus, Cafe 53 in Hyde Park will seem very familiar—we get the feeling that everyone here frequently ruins family get-togethers by incessantly quoting Nietzsche. The interior feels comfortable and lived in, and there are plenty of tables for you to get some work done - as long as you avoid getting into any productivity-derailing debates about the existence of God.

This sunny, family-owned coffee shop in Back Of The Yards is great for some horchata latte-fueled work, a catch-up with a friend, or an interaction with a barista who’ll treat you like an instant regular. There’s a variety of pastries too, because Grano is a panaderia that bakes everything in-house. Get a Mexican hot chocolate donut and a piping hot cup of sweet cafe de olla to make that spreadsheet wrangling a little more tolerable.

Sweet Bean is a laid-back Taiwanese and Japanese cafe in the South Loop with lots of tables and great snacks. The focus here is on coffee and pastries (like egg tarts and sesame balls), but they also have a long list of tea lattes and fruit teas. And while studies have shown that nothing helps productivity like pineapple buns, Sweet Bean also has savory options like soup dumplings and breakfast sandwiches, too.

This Hyde Park cafe is light, airy, and located right on campus in a building with a university bookstore. Plein Air is perfect if you need to do anything remotely school-related, and also want the option to eat some very good tartines, salads, and grain bowls at the same time. It’s always busy, but never too crowded to get a seat with an outlet, and the food is way better than your go-to spot with a display case full of cake pops and egg white sandwiches.

Overflow in the South Loop is a nice change of pace from the sea of coffee chains in the area. They have great coffee, and an inviting space with album art decorating the walls—a nod to being located in the original home of one of the earliest Black-owned record companies, Vee-Jay Records. There are plenty of tables, so even though it’s usually busy with the work-from-home crowd, it’s never cramped. Overflow also has food in case you want to eat quiche while avoiding emails from your boss.

This sprawling Bridgeport coffee shop has a patio and spans multiple rooms—all of which feature hilarious and unsettling decor like a poster of a bloodthirsty zombified Thumper from Bambi, and disembodied arms sticking out of a wall (holding a coffee cup, of course). But besides the entire sale section of a Spirit Halloween, you’ll also find wifi, plenty of tables, good coffee, and a few baked goods and sandwiches at Jackalope.

Compared to Jackalope down the street, Bridgeport Coffeehouse has significantly less character. But what this coffee shop lacks in Halloween decor, it makes up for in tranquil, sunny, minimalist rooms perfect for catch-ups in murmured voices or times when you just really need to focus on your job applications sans distraction. Skip the small menu of sandwiches and wraps, and stick to the coffee—they roast and grind their own beans.

This coffee shop doubles as a bookstore, one of those ancient places that existed back before we got our Cheeto prints all over Kindle screens instead of actual books. Build Coffee is located in the Experimental Station on the South Side, and being here feels a lot like working in your living room, but with better coffee and fewer cats trying to lay on your laptop. Come for lattes and WiFi, and stay to finally finish reading that used copy of On The Road.

Cadinho is a bakery and cafe in McKinley Park specializing in Portuguese pastries. Yes, it’s a great spot for your coffee shop rotation, with a handful of tables and plenty of sunlight—but come here for the tarts. The sweet, silky smooth, vanilla-scented egg custard nestled in buttery, flaky pastry is great on its own as a plain pastel de nata, but it’s even better when it’s balanced by a little half-shell of bittersweet chocolate.

If you’re working in the Loop, this is where you want to be. Two Zero Three is the coffee shop at the ground level of the Virgin Hotel, and it doesn’t have the same sceney-ness as the other hotel restaurants. The space has a mixture of couches, counter seating, and tables that make it easy to work. At night, it turns into a wine bar, so have some friends meet you when you’ve finally finished overthinking that email to your boss.