How many people drink coffee in the United States?
Well, that’s an interesting question, and not just because we’d like to offer our subscription service to all of them.
The coffee industry is reportedly a $30 billion per year industry in the US alone. It gets tricky crunching the numbers, as they seem to vary, with USA Today claiming as many as 83% of US adults drink coffee; while Harvard reports that the National Coffee Association claims this number to be 54%.
As of 2017, the US adult population sits at about 245,300,000.
If we take Gallup’s polls as the closest to truth, then 64% of the US adult population drinks coffee. By doing the math, this means that about 157 million people drink coffee in the US.
It is also interesting to note that children are largely ignored by many of these polling organizations, or shown to not count for much. It seems that the older someone gets the more likely they are to drink coffee, which brings the numbers up for everyone.
What are the coffee drinking habits outside of the US?
But, that was just in the United States; what about the rest of the world?
Well, the funny thing to note is that the US does not lead the world in drinking coffee.
According to The Atlantic, countries that surpass the US in coffee drinking are (in order from most coffee drinking to least, but still beating the US): the Netherlands, Finland, Sweden, Denmark, Germany, Slovakia, Serbia, Czech Republic, Poland, Norway, Slovenia, Canada, Belgium, Switzerland, and New Zealand.
It seems coffee growth is continuing to rise in many countries across the world. Africa and South America, despite being producers of coffee, have consumed little of it. That is, until recently.
Although the US is not the most populous country in the world, the US does put away more gallons of coffee per year than any other country.
What about China’s coffee drinking habits?
China, with the largest population in the world currently, tend to get their caffeination from tea. However, there is a growing demand for coffee in China within this last decade. This is largely due to US corporations like Starbucks seeing the potential profit in trying to convert China’s 1.38 billion people to coffee.
It is tough to find reliable stats from China about coffee drinking, but an association there says that the average Chinese person consumes 5 cups of coffee per year and that this is growing by 15% per year. It is also interesting to note that it is mostly the younger generations who are drinking coffee. That is interesting because tea is the traditional option, offered nearly everywhere within China.
You might think their large population drinking 5 cups of coffee per year would topple the US. But it does not, and it is not even close. Westerners average about 240 cups of coffee per year, according to the same Chinese association.
Now there are energy drinks and energy shots taking over though. Do you think that will affect how many people drink coffee in the United States years down the line? Do you tend to drink more coffee, tea, or energy drinks? Let us know here, on Facebook, or Instagram!
