Incredibly post-modern, apparently. But then, post-modernism kinda relies on the audience to provide the context, doesn’t it?
Post-Modernism doesn’t give a flying duck. 
Hello Again is right that Starbucks is really what took espresso drinks from a niche product to the mass market, but at this point espresso coffee is no longer anything special. It is typically something that one only gets when one is out, however, since most homes and workplaces will only have filter coffeemakers.
What are your coffee-drinking habits at home and work? Americans will, stereotypically, make a pot of (drip) coffee at home every morning, enough for a couple of cups. Most workplaces will have a communal (drip) coffee pot. Do you all typically have your own espresso makers?
Heh. There’s no excuse for robusta (hell, they use it to make cigars, right?), but this is an outdated perception. Any coffee above the cheapest supermarket coffees will be arabica, and and even the supermarket coffees have moved to arabica, or at least blends.
Remember, you’ve probably only had bad (or at least cheap) filter coffee. With a bit of care, filter coffee is exquisite. I find it mellower and more complex in flavor than espresso.
Drip coffee is also available here in a variety of beans and roasts: light roast, dark roast, Kenyan, Sumatran, Honduran, etc. Coffee beans and grounds can also be bought by the bag in pre-flavored varieties, like hazelnut or vanilla.
Ironically, Starbucks is now trying to push packets of instant coffee. I can’t imagine the market; in this country, instant is what you drink when you can’t get drip or espresso, and you can always get drip or espresso.
I associate instant coffee with old people, although that may be in part due to the heavy marketing of an instant decaf coffee called Sanka to the older market.
I thought they used tobacco to make cigars. 
You’re probably thinking of the cigar shape called a robusto. Note the spelling. It’s a short, fat, straight-sided cigar–typically 4 to 5 inches long by 3/4 (or so) of an inch wide.
Americans, I think are also very into the terroir of their coffee; its geographical origin which, alongside the roasting style, contributes to its unique flavor characteristic. At any moderately sized grocery store there will be coffee marked predominantly by its origin, secondarily by its roast (Columbian Supremo, Guatemalan light roast; Brazilian French Roast, etc). Not 100% but a lot of it. Since the US is geographically close to many coffee producing nations this makes some sense that we are well exposed to the slight variations.
OK, but back to the actual question, it seems to me that the 24 hour places in the US do a big business in breakfast. Which makes sense because the ingredients are extremely cheap and are durable on the shelf (don’t spoil easily) as well as easy to cook correctly so little is wasted. You can give customers a lot and still make a tidy profit; If a customer spends $7 they’ll get a plate that fills half the table!
I mean, I guess technically Denny’s serves all kinds of food but I pretty much always order “breakfast anytime” there. Maybe a burger if I was feeling frisky.
From a previous post it sounds like American-style or “Full English” type fried giant breakfast is actually not very popular in Australia. That would be a problem, I’d think; at least for the Denny’s type place I would not be surprised if breakfast-all-day profit is propping up everything else on the menu.
I’ve ordered items other than breakfast at Denny’s (though I do like going there with the newspaper for a big Sunday morning breakfast). At such times, I tend towards the typical diner fare: meatloaf with mushroom gravy and mashed potatoes, for example. Better burgers and steaks are available elsewhere, so I don’t even bother with them at Denny’s. While Denny’s diner offerings likely aren’t quite as good as they might be at a Mom-'n-Pop diner, they’re still pretty good when I get a hankering for basic diner food.
I wonder if the reason Australians haven’t taken to 24-hour places is because of a few factors that result in 24-hour places having a difficult time of it. Based on what I’ve seen of Australian cities, they sprawl over huge areas and seem to be mostly suburbs. There seem to be fewer pubs and bars in these suburbs than I’ve seen in North America. Extremely tough drinking and driving laws make it difficult to take your car out to a downtown or otherwise faraway pub or nightclub for the evening if you have to travel miles through an urban and suburban area to get back home. Taxis over that distance get expensive, and public transit doesn’t tend to run as late as we expect in North America, or serve outlying areas as extensively, if at all. So, folks don’t tend to go out as often and as far and as late as we might in North America–as a result, a lot of entertaining seems to be done at home with local friends, and involves food anyway, so there is no need to find an eatery that’s open late.
I could be wrong on this, but that was the impression I formed after a few visits there. If that’s the case, though, I can see why a 24-hour place wouldn’t work–if you’re out and about in the wee hours at all, you’re probably not far from home, and unlikely to be hungry. Late- or night-shift workers probably just want to get to work or home; late-night travellers and truckers seem to be too few to support a 24-hour place and those that are out probably just make do with the offerings from McDonald’s or gas stations etc. that they can grab and take on the road. The chances of anybody going out of their way to get a sit-down restaurant meal at odd hours would seem to be slim to none.
I have no idea if this theory would have any validity though. Australians, any comments?
Althuogh Australians can presumably get their java from, well, Java. 
Good point! Note too that one of the quintessential features of breakfast in such a place in the US is unlimited refills of coffee. The dispiriting lack of that jittery pleasure in Australia might deprive those restaurants of one of their reasons for being.
A weak joke on my part.
Seems pretty good to me. The nuances are the heart of the discussion, though- I mean, there’s lots of people out and about and night these days, especially in big cities. It’s still surprising places aren’t at least open later than they are.
People typically don’t make a lot of coffee at home - if they do, it’s usually instant for themselves, plunger coffee if they’re a step above that.
With that said, home cappuccino makers aren’t uncommon.
At work, pretty much every workplace has a Zip machine (an instant-boiler hot water system), or an urn if they you’re in a less permanent workplace like a building site. There’ll typically be instant coffee and teabags made available.
Most of the diners around here serve a full menu 24 hours a day (how they do this I don’t know)- not great food but passable- I have seen everything from eggs to escargot
here is a local diners menu
Yes, I know that, I am talking about where the profits come from. My argument is without doing a lot of business specifically in high profit breakfast foods, the restaurant will not be sucessful long term.
Anyway, I don’t think the suburbs thing is the problem either. I know my college friends who came from the Great Suburban Wasteland that is the DC suburbs, went to Denny’s late at night specifically because it was the only place open in their suburb after 10pm. Don’t teens in Australia want to get out of the house for a few hours?
Sure. That’s what bags of goon, bottles of Passion Pop and local parks are for.
Yes, they do get out of the house. Where they go depends on where they live, they might go to the local cinemas, shopping centres, Maccas or if they’re old enough to drive they’ll just drive around and hang out where ever their mates are… parks, petrol stations, parking lots or if they live in a small town they’ll do laps of the main street. I’m sure there’s other options, but that’s what we used to do when I was a teenager.