Based on reader feedback regarding last week’s “Who Cares About Coffee Anyway” blog post, it was clear that we needed to dig deeper than a top 10 list of coffee cities (based on per capita Coffee Review readership). Numerous readers asked where their hometown ranked. We decided that we needed to expand the list, perhaps to a top 100.
But it occurred to us that readers not residing in the top 100 cities would continue to wonder where their city or town ranked. Instead, we ran the numbers by state (for April – June 2013) so no one, in the United States anyway, would feel left out. Here’s what we found… breaking news: Washingtonians loves coffee. No surprise there.
However, the state of Washington was NOT #1 in terms of per capita Coffee Review readership. Hawaii is #1! That seems surprising at first glance but, when you consider that Hawaii is the only state that produces coffee commercially, it stands to reason that a lot of people have a vested interest in coffee news and reviews.
Here’s the top 10:
1. Hawaii
2. Washington
3. Massachusetts
4. Vermont
5. California
6. Montana
7. Oregon
8. New York
9. Colorado
10. New Hampshire
It was interesting to see where people are NOT reading Coffee Review. The lowest per capita readership by state is as follows:
50. Mississippi
49. Arkansas
48. West Virginia
47. Kentucky
46. Idaho
45. Alabama
44. Utah
43. South Carolina
42. Louisiana
41. Oklahoma
Obviously, if you don’t have access to the internet, you can’t visit CoffeeReview.com. Many of the states ranked 41-50 have lower internet connectivity rates than those in the top 10. The above results were normalized for internet connectivity.
Now, keep in mind that plenty of folks in Mississippi, including my sister-in-law, read Coffee Review. However, as a whole, Mississippians just aren’t as interested in reading about coffee as people from Hawaii. To put it in perspective, if you live in Hawaii, you are five times more likely to read Coffee Review than if you live in Mississippi.
The remainder of the ranking is as follows:
11. Minnesota
12. Illinois
13. Alaska
14. New Jersey
15. North Carolina
16. Virginia
17. Kansas
18. Maryland
19. Florida
20. Connecticut
21. Missouri
22. Georgia
23. Wisconsin
24. Pennsylvania
25. Maine
26. Texas
27. Arizona
28. Indiana
29. South Dakota
30. Michigan
31. Nevada
32. New Mexico
33. Rhode Island
34. Tennessee
35. Nebraska
36. Iowa
37. Ohio
38. North Dakota
39. Wyoming
40. Delaware
Later in the year, we’ll revisit the readership data and incorporate some additional factors, such as concentration of roasters and cafes, to add some texture to these admittedly one dimensional rankings.
