Orlando Named #1 Coffee City in U.S.

Well, color me surprised!

The city of Orlando was named the #1 coffee city in the United States by SimpleTexting.com. This was a bit of a surprise, because when I think coffee cities, I usually think of Portland, Oregon or Seattle, Washington.

Except they’ve been unseated by Central Florida and currently sit at numbers 4 and 8, respectively.

SimpleTexting did some rather extensive research into what makes a good coffee city, as well as how much coffee people drink in those cities, how much they spend, and what their favorite drinks are.

1) The number of coffee shops per 100k people 2) The average Yelp rating of coffee shops, and 3) The average Yelp price level of coffee stores. We then rated each of the eight components on a 5-point scale, with a score of 5 indicating the most positive coffee conditions. Each city received an overall score based on the total of each one’s individual factor scores, which were weighted according to their significance for coffee drinkers. The highest possible score for a city was 25 points.

The results are as follows:

1. Orlando, FL – 20.4
2. Tampa, FL – 18.4
3. Pittsburgh, PA – 17.4
4. Portland, OR – 15.8
5. Washington, DC – 15.0
6. St. Louis, MO – 14.9
7. Miami, FL – 14.4
8. Seattle, WA – 14.3
9. Denver, CO – 14.1
10. Atlanta, GA – 14.0
11. Minneapolis, MN – 13.3
12. San Diego, CA – 12.9
13. Detroit, MI – 12.9
14. Phoenix, AZ – 12.5
15. Philadelphia, PA – 11.9
16. Dallas, TX – 11.3
17. Charlotte, NC – 10.9
18. Houston, TX – 10.8
19. New York, NY – 10.5
20. San Antonio, TX – 10.2
21. Chicago, IL – 9.8
22. San Francisco, CA – 9.6
23. Los Angeles, CA – 8.9
24. Baltimore, MD – 8.5

A few things that surprised me.

First, I was very pleased that Orlando made the top of the list. Hell, I would have been happy with a Top 5 finish, but this shows me that the coffee culture in this city is really growing.

Second, I was disappointed that Indianapolis was on the list at all. I don’t know if it’s because they didn’t make the cut, or if SimpleTexting just didn’t consider them.

Third, I think New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles’ overall size lowered their ranking since it’s hard to have one coffee shop for every 100,000 residents. The city of Orlando has close to 280,000 residents, while the Central Florida area — Seminole, Orange, and Osceola Counties — has 2.1 million. That means you only need 2.8 shops in Orlando and 21 in Central Florida.

But New York City’s 8+ million means you need at least 80 coffee shops in the city, which is a little more difficult. They probably have them, but it’s much harder to achieve.

Finally, they didn’t specify what kinds of coffee shops they counted, so I couldn’t tell if they were only counting independent coffee shops or if they were including the big corporate chains as well. Still, Orlando has plenty of excellent indie coffee shops which no doubt helped it achieve it’s #1 ranking.

As the weather gets colder, there’s nothing better than a hot cup of coffee to warm you up. So visit your favorite independent coffee shop this week and see why indie coffee is always better than corporate coffee.

Photo credit: Engin_Akyurt (Pixabay, Creative Commons 0)
Best Cities for Coffee Graphic by SimpleTexting (Used with permission)