2021’s Best Coffee Cities in America to Celebrate National Coffee Day
But first, coffee.
If it were up to me, I would have coffee forever running through my veins. I adore them. With National Coffee Day around the corner and coffee consumption up 8% since January 2020, the personal-finance website WalletHub today released its report on 2021’s Best Coffee Cities in America.
To determine the best local coffee scenes in America, WalletHub compared the 100 largest cities across 12 key indicators of strong coffee culture. The data set ranges from coffee shops, coffee houses, and cafés per capita to the average price per pack of coffee.
Top 20 Cities for Coffee Lovers
| Overall Rank (1 = Best) |
City | Total Score | Overall Rank (1 = Best) |
City | Total Score | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Portland, OR | 64.29 | 51 | Newark, NJ | 40.17 | |
| 2 | San Francisco, CA | 63.40 | 52 | San Antonio, TX | 40.08 | |
| 3 | Seattle, WA | 62.07 | 53 | Nashville, TN | 39.85 | |
| 4 | Orlando, FL | 60.12 | 54 | Omaha, NE | 39.84 | |
| 5 | Pittsburgh, PA | 58.82 | 55 | Charlotte, NC | 39.30 | |
| 6 | Honolulu, HI | 58.61 | 56 | Tucson, AZ | 39.18 | |
| 7 | Tampa, FL | 56.87 | 57 | Chandler, AZ | 38.42 | |
| 8 | Miami, FL | 55.89 | 58 | Riverside, CA | 38.16 | |
| 9 | San Diego, CA | 55.80 | 59 | Reno, NV | 38.16 | |
| 10 | Boston, MA | 55.36 | 60 | Jacksonville, FL | 37.82 | |
| 11 | Minneapolis, MN | 54.24 | 61 | Baltimore, MD | 37.60 | |
| 12 | Los Angeles, CA | 53.79 | 62 | St. Paul, MN | 37.53 | |
| 13 | Denver, CO | 53.09 | 63 | Arlington, TX | 37.19 | |
| 14 | Long Beach, CA | 52.40 | 64 | Phoenix, AZ | 37.13 | |
| 15 | New Orleans, LA | 52.31 | 65 | Louisville, KY | 36.93 | |
| 16 | Oakland, CA | 51.53 | 66 | Lincoln, NE | 36.91 | |
| 17 | Jersey City, NJ | 51.15 | 67 | Bakersfield, CA | 36.67 | |
| 18 | Washington, DC | 50.68 | 68 | Chula Vista, CA | 35.96 | |
| 19 | Irvine, CA | 50.55 | 69 | Fort Wayne, IN | 35.88 | |
| 20 | New York, NY | 50.39 | 70 | North Las Vegas, NV | 35.72 |
Once you see the data, you might be a little shocked like I was. Why was I taken back? The price of coffee! Kansas City, Missouri, has the lowest average price for a pack of coffee, $3.44, which is 2.5 times lower than in Honolulu, the city with the highest at $8.69. I can’t even fathom paying $8 plus for a small coffee. My mind can not comprehend it.
Fremont, California, has the highest average annual spending on coffee per household, $229.62, which is 3.5 times higher than in Hialeah, Florida, the city with the lowest at $65.06. Gilbert, Arizona, has the highest share of households that own a single-cup/pod-brewing coffee maker, 28.11 percent, which is 2.6 times higher than in Hialeah, Florida, the city with the lowest at 10.93 percent.
Orlando, Florida, has the most coffee shops, coffee houses, and cafés (per square root of population), 0.4529, which is 8.2 times more than in Laredo, Texas, the city with the fewest at 0.0550. Portland, Oregon, has the most coffee and tea manufacturers (per square root of population), 0.0211, which is 42.2 times more than in Riverside and San Bernardino, California, the cities with the fewest at 0.0005. You can read the full report here.
