It’s no surprise that with as hard as Americans work, coffee is the lifeblood of the country’s spirit. WalletHub released a list of 2017’s best coffee cities in America on Tuesday, calling out the 100 best cities to cultivate the coffee culture. If you are holding events in these top five cities, you might want to add a jolt of local flavor to breaks.
5. Los Angeles
L.A.’s coffee culture has been percolating for a while now. The city is celebrating its “nouveau coffee” era in style, with each neighborhood bringing a different flavor: the specialty coffee culture downtown is world apart from the hip trends of Silver Lake, for instance. Los Angeles’ multicultural roots overflow into the coffee world, too, like the Vietnamese iced coffee at Café Dulce or any of the internationally inspired brews at Demitasse.
4. New York City
The City That Never Sleeps does so because it’s running on coffee. The city has an annual coffee festival that is just around the corner, having since expanded to other cities. But New York City and coffee go together like peanut butter and jelly—who doesn’t remember Monk’s Café from Seinfeld or Central Perk from Friends? The West Coast may take the cake for famous coffee, but the East Coast is coming with remarkable roasters—and those willing to drink it all up.
3. San Francisco
The Bay Area has played a major role in the West Coast’s influence on coffee culture. Peet’s Coffee was founded in Berkeley, where college students live off the stuff. And in the city, Phil Jaber wanted to leave behind a legacy better than a liquor store, so he created Philz Coffee in the Mission District. San Francisco is also home to the $20 cup of coffee at Blue Bottle Coffee Company—and worth every drop.
2. Portland, OR
Portland’s known for being weird—what’s so weird about coffee? Stumptown Coffee Roasters, based on Portland, is probably the quintessential West Coast coffee. In 2012, journalist Oliver Strand wrote in The New York Times, “Seattle coffee might have more muscle, and San Francisco coffee might have more mystique, but Portland’s coffee scene is arguably the country's most intimate. It's also one of the most relaxed.” So that’s what the fuss is about.
1. Seattle
It should surprise no one that the top spot on the list is Seattle, famously the home of Starbucks. Coffee in Seattle has been studied—everything from coffee culture in the city to the style of roasting. Seattleites also consume more coffee than any other city in the U.S. And they know where to go: the city’s local press boasts heat maps every season for where the best coffee is.
Want to see the rest of the list? Check and see if your city is on WalletHub’s Best Coffee Cities in America study.
