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I came across this sentence recently and I’m really curious why there isn't an article before coffee. So here’s the sentence:

You don’t need to text me back. I completely understand if you don’t want to talk to me. But on the off chance you do, would you wanna grab coffee sometimes?

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    BTW, the word sometimes there suggests multiple future visits to the coffee shop, rather than a single open-ended invitation. It is idiomatic to grab a coffee; "grab coffee" strikes my ear as "off".
    – TimR
    Commented Jan 14, 2019 at 14:55
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    And "grab coffee sometimes" is definitely an unidiomatic combination. "Grab" here denotes something ad hoc, spontaneous, spur-of-the-moment. It's like asking "Would you like to plan to run into each other accidentally now and then?"
    – TimR
    Commented Jan 14, 2019 at 16:55
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    "Grab coffee" sounds quite idiomatic to me, but "sometimes" should be "sometime" unless you really intend to suggest recurring events. In this context, a single possible event should be referred to by "sometime".
    – Tashus
    Commented Jan 14, 2019 at 21:50

1 Answer 1

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Many foodstuffs are both countable and uncountable. All the following are idiomatic:

Go for a coffee.

Go for some coffee.

Go for coffee.

The first one can only mean "Go and have a cup of coffee" (though it doesn't rule out having more than one!). The others usually mean that, but in context they could also mean "go and buy some ground coffee or coffee beans".

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