But by offering favorable lease terms and facilitating construction, developers have had success luring coffee bars into office buildings and hotels. The real estate developer Jamestown approached Kaffe 1668, which has two shops in TriBeCa, about opening a tiny coffee bar in the lobby of an office building at Fifth Avenue and 45th Street; Michael Phillips, Jamestown’s chief operating officer, said the company wanted a shop that would set the tone for the building. “Midtown is not so artisanal, or not thought of that way,” he said. “It was a great opportunity to shift the dialogue.” Now you can sit on one of the lobby’s sleek couches and sip a coffee brewed to order with beans from Finca la Felicidad, named for the farm in Guatemala where they are grown.

Traditionally, the batch brewer — the large coffee urn you would see in an office break room or at a church social — provides the muscle for a shop: It’s easy to dispense a drip coffee to go. But at shops like Little Collins, a small and fastidious coffee bar that opened in Midtown last year, most of the orders are either espresso drinks or pour-over coffee, both of which take time to prepare. According to Leon Unglik, an owner, some of the customers live in neighborhoods with good coffee shops and are familiar with this level of craft. But others are new converts or tourists who wandered over from Bloomingdale’s.

During the lunch rush, when a mostly corporate crowd floods the tiny room, the staff at Little Collins will turn out as many as 120 coffees in two hours. “The challenge is to get coffee out really quickly,” Mr. Unglik said. “People around here don’t like to wait for anything.”