I’ve Worked From 500 Coffee Shops — Here’s How Buffer Supports That

I've been working remotely at Buffer for over 10 years. In that time, I've worked from more than 500 different coffee shops across Taipei, Chiang Mai, Bangkok, Tokyo, Lisbon, Paris, and plenty of places in between.

Wherever I am, the routine is the same: I find a cafe, open my laptop, and get to work. I'm based in Taiwan, where working from a coffee shop is just the norm. Most cafes are set up for it, and there's one within a five-minute walk from pretty much anywhere. It's the perfect place for this kind of work style.

This isn't just a lifestyle I stumbled into. Buffer has a specific perk that makes this possible: the coffee shop stipend. It's probably my favorite benefit at the company. And it recently got a meaningful upgrade — because I asked.

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How Buffer supports working from coffee shops

Buffer has been fully remote since the beginning. There's no office and no headquarters — just people around the world doing their work from wherever works best for them.

That freedom is great, but it can also mean days when you don't leave your apartment or talk to anyone face-to-face. "Don't you feel alone when working alone?" is probably the question I get the most as a remote worker.

Coffee shops solve that. You get a change of scenery, ambient noise, and the occasional random encounter. I've met people in cafes, made long-time friends just by asking the person next to me what they're working on, and had some of my most productive deep-work days at a random spot I found on Google Maps.

Of course, coffee shop work isn't free. Most venues expect you to order at least a coffee or two to use their space, which is completely fair!

To support this way of working, Buffer introduced a coffee shop stipend years ago. The idea is simple: the company reimburses beverages and small snacks you purchase in order to work at a coffee shop or cafe.

For years, the stipend looked like this:

• $15 per day cap
• $200 per month maximum

When it was introduced in 2018, this structure worked well. The stipend encouraged me, and a lot of teammates, to get out of the house and work from interesting places.

Evolving the coffee shop stipend

Since the $200 per month limit was set in 2018, it hasn't changed. And the world has changed a lot.

Coffee prices have gone up quite significantly, from as low as $3 per kilogram for Arabica to a record $9 per kilogram by early 2025. Robusta hit nearly $6 per kilogram in the same period.

Those wholesale increases trickle down to what you actually pay at the counter.

In Taipei, a decent coffee costs $4-5 now. In Europe or the US, you're looking at $5-7 easily. Add a snack, and you're at $10-15 for a single sitting. The $15-per-day cap no longer covered one session, and many cafes now ask you to order again after an hour or charge per hour for seating, driving costs higher. That's before tips.

The daily cap also created friction. If you spent $18 one day, you'd either eat the difference or manually split the transaction to claim exactly $15.

There was also no flexibility for adjacent work setups. I'd been toying with the idea of exploring a coworking day pass when I needed a quiet space for calls, which wasn't covered by the budget. The dollar weakening against many currencies didn't help either.

So I brought it up in our internal Slack channel. I shared the math, explained why the stipend wasn't keeping up, and asked if it was worth opening a conversation about updating it.

Teammates started sharing their experiences on the thread. Senior Engineer Arek Panek mentioned that $15 works fine in Poland, but whenever he travels abroad — the US, Australia, anywhere more expensive — it becomes really hard to stay under the cap. He'd just cap his expenses at $15 and absorb the rest out of pocket.

Steven Cheng, also a Senior Engineer, said the same: "If I'm over the $200/month budget I simply don't expense them." David raised a great question: why have a daily cap at all, rather than just a monthly budget at the individual's discretion? He was manually splitting transactions every visit and never using the full benefit.

Suzanne Kelly, our Operations Manager, pulled data: the average teammate who uses the stipend spends $68 per month. So the $200 cap was meeting most people's needs. She also pointed out something important: $200 in 2018 is $250 in 2025, accounting for inflation. The cap hadn't kept up.

Within a day, she updated the policy.

Buffer's new coffee shop stipend

Starting August 2025, here's what the coffee shop stipend looks like today:

• $250 per month (up from $200, adjusted for inflation)
• No $15/day limit — more flexibility to use the monthly budget however works best for you
• Expanded scope — the stipend now also covers day passes for coworking spaces and libraries, and in-flight Wi-Fi when you occasionally need to work while traveling

The spirit of the stipend hasn't changed. It's still meant to cover a coffee, tea, or small snack, not a full meal. But removing the daily limit means you're no longer penalized for having a $20 day followed by a $0 day.

The coworking and in-flight wifi additions help, too. Being in Asia means my meetings often land in the evening, and a coworking space beats a noisy cafe for a full day of calls. In-flight Wi-Fi means I can make those four-hour flights between cities productive.

The stipend is for teammates who don't already have a regular coworking membership — Buffer covers those separately. The goal isn’t to encourage more spending, but to better support how people actually work.

What the coffee stipend actually buys

Being able to work from anywhere has always been my favorite part of working at Buffer. The coffee shop stipend is what makes it practical — and I try to be a good guest wherever I set up. If a place isn't laptop-friendly, I move on. If I'm unsure, I ask. Most cafes are happy to have you as long as you're respectful of the space.

It's a small perk, but it's the one that's had the most impact on how I live. Working from cafes is how I've met people who became long-time friends, how I've spent months in places I'd only seen on a map, all while doing my regular job. And the fact that it just got better because a teammate raised their hand and said, "Hey, this could work better"? That says a lot about how this company works.