café , cafeteria

A coffeehouse, coffee shop, or café is an establishment that primarily serves coffee (of various types, e.g. espresso, latte, cappuccino). Some coffeehouses may serve cold drinks such as iced coffee and iced tea; in continental Europe, cafés serve alcoholic drinks. A coffeehouse may also serve food such as light snacks, sandwiches, muffins, fruit or pastries. Coffeehouses range from owner-operated small businesses to large multinational corporations. Some coffeehouse chains operate on a franchise business model, with numerous branches across various countries around the world.

A cafeteria, sometimes called a canteen outside the U.S., is a type of food service location in which there is little or no waiting staff table service, whether a restaurant or within an institution such as a large office building or school; a school dining location is also referred to as a dining hall or lunchroom (in American English). Cafeterias are different from coffeehouses, although the English term came from Latin American Spanish, where it had and still has the meaning "coffeehouse".

While café may refer to a coffeehouse, the term "café" generally refers to a diner, British café (colloquially called a "caff"), "greasy spoon" (a small and inexpensive restaurant), transport café, teahouse or tea room, or other casual eating and drinking place. A coffeehouse may share some of the same characteristics of a bar or restaurant, but it is different from a cafeteria. Many coffeehouses in the Middle East and in West Asian immigrant districts in the Western world offer shisha (actually called nargile in Levantine Arabic, Greek and Turkish), flavored tobacco smoked through a hookah. An espresso bar is a type of coffeehouse that specializes in serving espresso and espresso-based drinks.

From a cultural standpoint, coffeehouses largely serve as centers of social interaction: a coffeehouse provides patrons with a place to congregate, talk, read, write, entertain one another, or pass the time, whether individually or in small groups. Since the popularization of Wi-Fi, coffeehouses with this capability have also become places for patrons to access the Internet on their laptops and tablet computers.

The most common English spelling café, is the French, Portuguese, and Spanish spelling, and was adopted by English-speaking countries in the late 19th century. The Italian spelling, caffè, is also sometimes used in English.

In a cafeteria, instead of table service, there are food-serving counters/stalls or booths, either in a line or allowing arbitrary walking paths. Customers take the food that they desire as they walk along, placing it on a tray. In addition, there are often stations where customers order food, particularly items such as hamburgers or tacos which must be served hot and can be immediately prepared with little waiting. Alternatively, the patron is given a number and the item is brought to their table. For some food items and drinks, such as sodas, water, or the like, customers collect an empty container, pay at the check-out, and fill the container after the check-out. Free unlimited second servings are often allowed under this system.

Customers are either charged a flat rate for admission (as in a buffet) or pay at the check-out for each item. Some self-service cafeterias charge by the weight of items on a patron's plate. In universities and colleges, some students pay for three meals a day by making a single large payment for the entire semester.

六级/考研单词: continent, snack, pastry, franchise, cafeteria, canteen, workforce, dine, spoon, casual, immigrate, flavor, tobacco, standpoint, interact, patron, congregate, entertain, laptop, compute, stall, booth, arbitrary, desire, tray, seldom, hamburger, alternate, soda, buffet, semester