'It changes the energy': the cafes stopping customers from using their laptops

"To the Coffee-house, and there all the house full of the discourse of the great fire," wrote Samuel Pepys of his trip to a 17th-century cafe - the nerve centre of London's gossiping elite.

- Olivia Lee

Fast forward to the 21st century and the chattering classes have been replaced with the clattering classes - remote workers busily hammering away on their laptop keyboards and shouting on video calls to be heard over coffee beans being ground.

As the post-pandemic boom in working from home collided with the practical drawbacks of being stuck at home all day, coffee shops became the remote worker's retreat. But some cafe owners are staging a fightback.

"No laptop" signs have been springing up in cafe windows across the UK as their owners reclaim their spaces.

For Ollie Gold, co-owner of Pophams Bakery, which opened its latest site in 2022, restricting laptops in all three of its London branches was a business decision to raise turnover so the company would survive.