okay ALRIGHT coffee shop au for charles bingley:
to rope in his canonical means of wealth: the bingleys are new money, who made their wealth recently (his father died before he could even buy an estate with their riches) and are said to be from the north of england which is where a lot of the hustle and bustle of the market business occurred (mining, shipbuilding, shipping, trading, cotton textile, etc). while the specifics of how the bingleys made their money is never mentioned, it is presumed they made it from cotton trading/textile. that was the biggest booming industry of austen’s time. saying the bingleys made their money in north of england then is like saying today that someone made their money in silicon valley (knowing ppl inherently understand they mustve been apart of some tech startup even though obv other companies exist in silicon valley).
ANYWAY, all of this to say, bingley is probably, like, the young ceo of a prominent coffee bean company. his father died so he is the head but he leaves all of the decision making to the board and other ppl. he just enjoys life with his big big money because he does not have the smarts or personality to be in business.
he often hangs out in one of his company’s coffee shops (they have almost no real coffee shops because their business is selling coffee beans not making coffee) which was created as a way to test new blends (that have already made it through meticulous in-company trials) on the general public.