Mocha, photo by smalltowngirl

I support local businesses where possible, and I also work remotely from locations around St. Louis regularly. I’m always watching for locally owned wi-fi hotpots where I’m welcome to sit with my laptop for 3-4 hours at a time, working.

I’ve fallen into the St. Louis Bread Company habit, and frankly, that depresses me. I don’t like their coffee that much, and the place just takes a little from my soul each time I work there, not unlike the way shopping in Wal-Mart kills my brain cells.

Exposed Brick, photo by smalltowngirl

Though it may at first seem unrelated, it was the Atomic Cowboy’s exposed brick walls last night at the #SeattleCatTweetup that made me realize just how much I hate working from Bread Company.

Not one to sit in discontent for long, I asked some St. Louis twitter friends today to make their suggestions for great wi-fi/work hotspots in and around St. Louis. As far as I know, all of these businesses are locally owned and have wi-fi. If you see a mistake here or you have additional suggestions, please leave a comment for me.

If you like this list, you should check out the list of St. Louis restaurants and bars twitter friends helped me generate in July.

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Kayak’s Coffee (on Skinker near Washington University)

Park Ave Coffee (Lafayette Square; open fairly late with great patio)

Bauhaus Kaffee (Farmington; serving Kaldi’s coffee)

Mississippi Mud (Cape Girardeau and St. Louis on Cherokee Street)

The Royale (South City)

Hartford Coffee (South of Tower Grove Park on Hartford Street)

Coffee Cartel (Central West End, Open 24 hours!)

Provisions (on Olive – This one was suggested, but I wouldn’t have thought of it as a work/wifi spot. Can anyone confirm or deny this is a potential laptop-friendly wifi spot?)

Murdoch Perk (closed Mondays; on Murdoch btwn S. Kingshighway and Hampton in Southampton)

La Dolce Via (closed Mondays and Tuesdays; on Taylor in the Grove/Forest Park Southeast)

Northwest Coffee (two locations; Central West End and Clayton)

Companion (Central West End, Clayton and Ladue)

Wired Coffee (Sunset Hills)

Foundation Grounds (Maplewood)

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(Thanks to @michaeltomko, @poppymom, @Lisa_S_47, @threefourteen, @meporter, @cjonescgp, @elsicomoro, @jrobmartin, @allabuzz and @theroyale for recommendations and more information about these businesses)

The coffee shop is lovely, with refreshingly happy and down to earth staff (no snobbish yuppy baristas here). There is a quirky turquoise mural of a tree with white flowers blossoming on the wall, and mismatched (but coordinated) upholstery covers high-backed chairs.

The pear and brie sandwich I had for lunch was lovely (fair warning though – it was onion heavy, though the onions were raw and easily removable). The iced mocha wasn’t bad either. Foundation Grounds gets brownie points for using biodegradable plastic cups, made from corn.

In the cold case, I found Kambucha, organic juices, Honest Tea, and Stonyfield Farm yogurt – a fairly forward-thinking collection of foods and drinks for this part of the country.

To top off my visit to Foundation Grounds, I overheard someone speaking Mandarin Chinese, and turned to find a husband and wife speaking Chinese to one another. The husband, a St. Louis-born acupuncturist and his wife had just moved back to St. Louis three days ago from years in Seattle and Asia.

His Chinese was far more fluent than my own (embarrassingly rusty) Chinese is, but it was so uplifting to meet another person who has moved back “home” to this part of the country after seeing the world in hopes of contributing something to the communities we grew up in.

Today’s coffee shop encounter is a reminder that when things happen (like servers crashing), there’s often something better in store. It’s been a rough last week for me, but with my hope and optimism restored, I’m looking forward to what the rest of this week holds.