Americans Are Drinking More Coffee Than Ever. These Are the Country's Most Caffeinated Cities

Ahead of International Coffee Day, Square data shows where America’s coffee habit runs deepest

Coffee is a daily ritual for millions of Americans, but new Square data shows some cities are running on caffeine more than others – and the answer to “most caffeinated” isn’t as simple as it sounds. In New York City alone, Square sellers moved nearly 80 million coffee items in 2025, and coffee now makes up 22% of all the food and beverage sales in the city – roughly one out of every five items New York’s restaurants, cafés, and bars sell is coffee. That said, dig deeper into the data, and “most caffeinated” starts to mean at least three different things depending on whether you’re measuring the size of a city’s coffee habit, the strength of it, or how fast it’s growing. Read on to see who’s buzzing.

The biggest coffee cities by volume

By volume (i.e., number of coffees sold), the ranking may come as no surprise. At the top: New York City leads by a wide margin, followed by Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, and Chicago. But a couple of details complicate the obvious story. Boston is the smallest metro in the top 10 by total coffee sold, yet it has the third-highest units sold per coffee seller in the country. So while Boston may have fewer coffee shops than bigger cities, the ones it has are busy. Austin sits at the other end: it moves real coffee volume, but has the lowest coffee “share” of its overall F&B sales of any city measured, just 12.9%, hinting at a dining scene that’s more food-forward than coffee-first.

Note: for this data story, we measured item-level sales of coffee products (including lattes, cappuccinos, americanos, espressos, cold brews, cortados, mochas, flat whites, macchiatos, pour overs, frappes, and drip coffee) across all Square food & beverage (F&B) sellers (restaurants, coffee shops, bars, cafés, and other F&B venues). Non-drink items (coffee baked goods, retail merchandise, coffee beans/grounds) were excluded.

Volume aside, which city is actually the most caffeinated?

Volume tells you the scale of a city’s coffee habit, not its caffeine strength – and by that second measure, the answer changes. Looking at the share of coffee orders that include an espresso shot (which contains approximately 5x the caffeine per 1oz, compared to coffee) or an extra shot, San Francisco comes out on top: 13.4% of all coffee orders there include an espresso or extra shot, nearly double the rate in Denver, which ranks last. Austin produced a surprise here: modest total coffee volume, but the second-highest espresso intensity of any city in the country, a pattern that lines up with its reputation as a specialty-coffee town. New York City is an interesting counterpoint: its espresso-tagged coffee sales alone – 15.6 million items – outnumber the entire coffee volume of most other cities on this list, and yet its espresso share is only middling. New York’s coffee culture is enormous. It just isn’t disproportionately shot-heavy.

What America actually orders: city coffee personalities

Look past the rankings and the product-level data tells its own story about regional taste. The latte is the one truly universal order. It’s the number one coffee drink in every single city measured, with no exceptions. Beyond that, distinct personalities emerge:

• New York City is the country’s cold brew capital, selling 10.5 million cold brews – more than the entire coffee volume of most other cities on this list
• Los Angeles is the matcha capital: Matcha Latte cracks its top five coffee products, a distinction no other city shares
• The Pacific Northwest still loves its mocha. It’s a top-five product in both Seattle and Portland
• Boston is the country’s iced-coffee city, as the only market where both Iced Latte and Iced Coffee appear in the top five of all coffee orders
• Chicago and Denver are drip-coffee towns, an old-school order that’s largely faded from the top five everywhere else

The price of a cup, city by city

California claims the three most expensive coffee markets in the country: Los Angeles ($6.19 average), San Diego ($6.12), and San Francisco ($5.96). But the national range is tighter than you might expect, with just 79 cents separating the priciest major market (LA) from the cheapest (Austin, at $5.40). One quirk worth noting: Portland and Chicago land on the exact same average price, $5.48, despite having little else in common in their coffee habits.

Coffee culture is still growing, and off a large base

Perhaps the most encouraging finding in the data: every single city measured is showing positive same-store coffee growth this year, meaning Americans are drinking more coffee, not less, and it isn’t simply a byproduct of Square signing up more coffee shops. San Francisco leads the pack at +8.3% year-to-date growth, consistent with its title as the country’s most espresso-intense city. Chicago isn’t far behind at +8.1%, hinting at a broader coffee boom taking hold in the Midwest. New York City grows more modestly, at +2.5% – but on a massive base of over 55 million units so far this year, that’s still 1.3 million more coffees than this time last year. Austin is the slowest grower of the ten, at +1.2%, consistent with its lower coffee share of overall F&B sales.

“We’ve been roasting and serving coffee in the Midwest since 1993, and Chicago has become one of the most exciting parts of our story,” said Will Boucher, IT Director at Colectivo Coffee, which currently has seven locations across Chicago and two more opening. “While a classic cup of brewed coffee is still our number one seller there, Chicagoans are also our most enthusiastic customers when it comes to what’s next, from cold brew to new flavors like our Iced Almond Brittle Latte. Today our Chicago cafes are some of the busiest in our company, and we’re still growing there.”

So, who’s actually the most caffeinated?

The answer depends on what you’re measuring. New York City is the volume capital, with a coffee habit larger than anywhere else in the country by a wide margin. San Francisco is the intensity capital, ordering more espresso and extra shots per cup than any other city – and it’s now the growth leader, too. Chicago is the one to watch, with a coffee culture that appears to be accelerating faster than almost anywhere else in the country right now. Depending on how you like your ranking – and your coffee strength – America has more than one city that can claim the crown.

Methodology: This analysis is based on anonymized, aggregated transaction data from Square point-of-sale sellers across 10 major U.S. metropolitan areas: Austin, Boston, Chicago, Denver, Los Angeles, New York City, Portland, San Diego, San Francisco, and Seattle. Each metro includes the core city and surrounding neighborhoods/boroughs (e.g., NYC includes all five boroughs and neighborhoods like Astoria, Williamsburg, and Park Slope; LA includes Santa Monica, Pasadena, Beverly Hills, etc.). We looked at 2021 through September 23, 2026. Year-over-year growth comparisons for 2025 vs. 2026 use the matched Jan 1–Sep 23 window of both years for direct comparison. All year-over-year growth figures use a “stable sellers” methodology — only counting sellers that were active in both compared periods. This ensures the growth reflects real changes in coffee demand, not Square’s expanding seller base.