A Caffeinated Nation

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With the booming growth of specialty coffee cafes that even offer 24-hour drive through, coffee is more accessible than ever. Recent statistics posted by the USDA state that the average American drinks 1.21 cups of regular drip coffee per day. Currently the U.S. population is roughly 300 million people, which equates to about 363 million cups of coffee consumed each day. One pound of coffee beans typically yields around 50 cups of coffee. So if you do a little math, the U.S. is consuming about 7.2 million pounds of coffee a day!

Enjoying a cup of specialty coffee

The gourmet specialty coffee is a category in itself. About 25% of the coffee that is consumed in the U.S. is specialty coffee. The most recent statistics showed that 16% of adults had at least one cup of specialty coffee a day and 63% of adults had the occasional cup of coffee.

The specialty coffee market has had considerable growth since the late 1980s. In 1989, there were only around 1000 specialty coffee outlets. But coupled with the Starbucks phenomenon, the industry has exponentially grown with new outlets opening every day. Over 18,000 coffee outlets are available in the United States, with Starbucks owning about half of them.

The specialty coffee followers split down the middle between independent coffeehouses and larger chains. A surprising fact is only 17% of adults in the U.S. purchase coffee house brands at grocery stores. Although drip coffee is dominating such a large segment of the industry, consumers are slowly identifying with brands such as Starbucks over others such as Folgers and Maxwell House.