Could modern western society work without coffee?

Coffee is really a fruit. What we call coffee “beans” are seeds. Coffee trees produce delicate white, jasmine-like blossom which lasts only a few days. The flowers give way to fruit called coffee cherries which turn bright red when ripe. The skin of the cherry is bitter but the flesh is intensely sweet with a grape-like texture. Inside various further layers are two bluish-green seeds – the coffee “beans”. These are not beans in the botanical meaning of the word. The word bean once meant only the seed of the broad bean. This later expanded to include members of the genus Phaseolus such as the haricot bean and the runner bean, and the related genus Vigna which includes mung and adzuki beans and black-eyed peas. The term is now applied to other related plants such as soybeans, peas, lentils, vetches and lupins. So ‘lupin smoothie’ is an allowable answer but is not recommended. Many species are toxic and though sweet lupin is edible it contains allergens also found in peanuts and may cause anaphylactic shock. The coffee tree is an evergreen which grows 20 ft tall but is pruned to 8-10 ft. Coffee pickers can pick 100 – 200 lbs (45 – 90 kg) of coffee cherries per day. Only 20 percent of this weight is the actual seed. It takes about 2,000 Arabica cherries to produce a pound of roasted coffee. Since each cherry contains two beans, your one pound of coffee is derived from 4,000 coffee “beans”. In 5-10% of any coffee crop, the cherry will contain only a single seed. This is called a 'peaberry' and it has a distinctly different, stronger flavour than normal. In common English usage, the word “beans” sometimes also refers to seeds or other organs of other plants. For example: castor beans (from which castor oil is made); cocoa beans (which resemble bean seeds), and vanilla beans (which resemble the pods). Botanically, these are not beans either.

Thanks to the elf's at QI for this info.