The 20 Best U.S. Cities for Coffee Lovers, Ranked

There are lots of very jittery people in these places.

By Jake Rossen |
Some cities are better for coffee drinkers than others.
Some cities are better for coffee drinkers than others. / d3sign/GettyImages

While Americans drink a lot of coffee, no one put it down like Honoré de Balzac. The 19th century French novelist and playwright drank up to 50 cups daily and eventually turned to eating grounds to satiate his bottomless appetite for caffeine. According to the National Coffee Association, today‘s average consumer drinks a far more reasonable three cups of coffee daily, or 68 gallons annually. And while that demand means you can find coffee practically anywhere in the country, there are some cities in which coffee devotees may fare better.

Recently, financial advice site WalletHub attempted to identify and rank the U.S. cities that were friendliest to coffee drinkers. While that may sound subjective, the site used a straightforward methodology: After singling out the 100 most populous cities, they evaluated each on metrics like the number of coffee shops per capita, the cost of coffee, coffee houses with free wi-fi, and even “coffee-centric events.”

You can view their rankings of the top 20 cities below:

  1. Portland, Oregon
  2. San Francisco, California
  3. Seattle, Washington
  4. Honolulu, Hawaii
  5. Orlando, Florida
  6. Tampa, Florida
  7. Long Beach, California
  8. New Orleans, Louisiana
  9. Austin, Texas
  10. Miami, Florida
  11. Oakland, California
  12. Los Angeles, California
  13. Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
  14. San Diego, California
  15. Minneapolis, Minnesota
  16. Boston, Massachusetts
  17. Atlanta, Georgia
  18. Sacramento, California
  19. Chicago, Illinois
  20. Las Vegas, Nevada

Portland edged out what might have been the expected winner, Seattle. Per WalletHub, the city ranked first owing to having the highest number of affordable coffee shops that were also well-reviewed. Residents are also somewhat fanatical about home brewing, with an estimated 24 percent owning a coffee grinder.

In addition to WalletHub’s criteria, Portland is a coffee hotspot for other reasons, most of which involve specialty items. Portland Cà Phê offers single-origin beans from Vietnam with twice the caffeine of regular beans; Super Joy Coffee imports beans from China to brew cups authentic to the Yunnan region.

San Francisco came in second for many of the same reasons: vast numbers of coffee shops and citizens who appear to take their morning cup seriously. The same holds true for Seattle, which also has a high percentage of locals who own cappuccino or espresso machines at home.

Additionally, the site analyzed how much the average household spends on coffee a year. Fremont, California, came in first place, followed by San Francisco and San Jose. There’s not as much interest in coffee in Detroit which spent the least.

You can see how they ranked the top 50 coffee cities on WalletHub.

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