Notas del episodio
In the working class cafes of Naples, a customer having a lucky day would pay for two coffees, drink one, and leave the second suspended for a stranger who could not afford it. The caffè sospeso was built on anonymity: the giver and receiver never meet, the barista acts as a neutral go-between, and the person asking keeps their dignity. The tradition faded during Italy's postwar boom of the 1950s and 1960s, and a reporter searching Naples in 2008 found no sign of it for at least 15 years. That same year philosopher Luciano De Crescenzo published a book titled Il caffè sospeso, and SSC Napoli chairman Aurelio De Laurentiis made a habit of buying ten sospesi after every win.
The revival arrived just as the 2008 financial crisis and the eurozone debt crisis hit. By 2011 Italian arts festivals had formed a Suspended Coffee Network, and Naples declared a suspended coffee day timed to Human Rights Day in December. In March 2013 Irish plumber John Sweeney started a Suspended Coffees Facebook page credited with inspiring more than 15 million suspended coffees in 34 countries. Starbucks UK adapted it as a matched cash donation to the charity Oasis. During the 2020 COVID lockdowns, Italians extended the idea to groceries, bread, and hot meals.
- A Dutch Christmas campaign and the platform OneCafe.org helped formalize the practice.
- In July 2013 an anonymous customer at an Edmonton Tim Hortons paid for 500 large coffees.
- That act set off more than 10,000 donated cups across 30 Edmonton locations.
- In September 2021 a donor in Istanbul paid for 501 Turkish coffees to top the Canadian record.
- The Istanbul gift was reported as the largest single suspended coffee donation in a hundred years.