Old Depot Coffee Company

Old Depot Coffee Company has four couches in an upstairs loft. That's the line that tells you what kind of work-from-cafe day is possible here, in a modern industrial-feeling space just off the Seymour town square in Missouri. There are high bar seats, regular tables, an outdoor area, and the loft upstairs with the couches, which is more seating-zone variety than most small-town cafes attempt to manage. The roaster smell hits when you walk in the door. The room can be quiet enough that staff are out of sight until you approach the counter, which is part of the place's appeal if you came to work and part of the strangeness if you came expecting a buzz of conversation around the bar. Order a cinnamon roll (one regular calls it an all-time favorite, which is the kind of claim worth testing for yourself), a breakfast burrito, a white chocolate mocha, a pumpkin chai, a slice of tiramisu, a drip coffee for the road. Take home a bag of beans, organic available, ground to order at the counter while you wait. Travelers off Highway 60 stop in for a cozy break from the drive, and so do dog owners and remote workers who want wifi, outlets, and a couch upstairs they can claim for the next two hours without anyone bothering them. The trade-off is the menu. It lacks itemized prices, which can be irritating if you're trying to keep a tab in your head before the total hits, and the room is quiet enough that a busy social scene this is not, which is either the feature or the flaw depending on what you came for. Get the cinnamon roll, climb the stairs to the loft, take one of the four couches, plug in, settle in for the afternoon. That's the move. The on-site roasting plus the grind-to-order setup makes the take-home bean program worth the stop on its own, and the highway-traveler audience is part of why the operation is set up to handle one-time visits as well as regulars.