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20 Cool Facts About US Coffee Culture

We love to talk about coffee – you get it. We’re artisan Ohio coffee roasters, after all; you’ve gotta be pretty into coffee to roast it just right. And it’s not just specifics on coffee flavor profiles, the best small batch blends or why water-processed decaf is the best – we also enjoy nerding out about semi-irrelevant coffee facts every once in a while. For instance, did you know that the origins of cold brew coffee are a mystery? It may have been the Dutch; it may have been the Japanese. No one knows. 

Okay, well we’ve already gotten ahead of ourselves, so that’s our first (unofficial) coffee fact. Here are 20 more tidbits of coffee trivia you didn’t know you wanted:

1. Two-thirds of Americans drink coffee every day, which is literally more people than drink tap water daily.

2. Nearly half of coffee-drinking millennials drink gourmet coffee, a higher rate than older generations.

3. 29% of US coffee drinkers – mostly women – use coffee as an unwinding ritual. (The perfect opportunity for some delicious flavored decaf coffee!)

4. 53% of coffee consumers are concerned with their coffee roasters on supplying environmentally-friendly, fair-trade, organic coffees that benefit the communities that farm the coffee beans.

5. One-fifth of Americans younger than 40 years old drink nitro and cold brew coffees.

6. Women are more likely to drink coffee daily than men.

7. Decaf coffee beans are the least popular kind of coffee bean, with an average of .23 cups of decaf coffee drunk daily per capita.

8. Cappuccinos and lattes are the most popular coffee beverages in the US, making up one-third of all espresso beverages consumed in the US daily.

9. 65% of coffee consumers drink a breakfast cup of coffee, and 35% of those people choose to drink their breakfast coffee black.

10. The most popular coffee drink in Ohio is an Americano; which our Silver Bullet Espresso blend coffee is perfect for, by the way.

11. Specialty coffee like small batch roasts and seasonal coffees are growing at a rate of 20% per year and now make up 8% of all US coffee sales.

12. In order, Seattle, Manhattan, San Francisco, and Pittsburgh are the most oversaturated cities for coffee shops per capita.

13. Americans drink 400 million cups of coffee per day, averaging out to about 3 cups a day per person.

14. There are currently more than 24,000 coffee shops in the US, which is expected to double in the coming years.

15. The popularity of espresso-based coffee drinks has risen by 50% in the last 7 years, primarily due to millennial coffee preferences.

16. The popularity of Keurig®-style single serve coffee pods has risen 50% in the last five years.

17. Only 9% of US coffee drinkers choose cold brew coffee as their preferred at-home coffee-brewing method.

18. One-quarter of US homes have a single-serve coffee maker, which was about 33 million homes in 2020.

19. Colombia is the US’s biggest coffee-trading partner, which is likely why Colombian dark roasts are nearly ubiquitous in every coffee retailer and café.

20. Since Starbucks debuted the Pumpkin Spice Latte in 2003, pumpkin spice specialty coffees, lattes, k cups®, creamers, and other products have become a $500 million industry. (Psst… we roast a sugar-and-gluten-free, organic pumpkin spice Arabica coffee in bags, k cups and decaf varieties!)

Intrigued and want to do a deep dive data analysis on all things coffee? Here are a few resources to satisfy your curiosity:

This is the Most Popular Coffee Drink in Your State, Data Shows (BestLife)

Coffee Consumption in the US by State: Statistics to Know (Coffee Affection)

The 22 Coffee Consumption Statistics and Facts (Coffee Affection)

NCA Releases Atlas of American Coffee (National Coffee Association USA)