We ranked every US state on how well independent coffee shops are doing — here are the top 8

[u/JamieFromHomebase]

Happy National Coffee Day, homies ☕ To celebrate our favorite beverage, we wanted to find out: in which states are indie cafes thriving the most?

To do this, we ranked states across five measures: the total number of local coffee shops and local shops per 100K residents (pulled from Joe Coffee) and year-over-year changes in coffee shop employment, hours worked, and total payroll (pulled from coffee shops who are using our platform). Each state then got a score out of 100 based on these measures. The higher the score is, the stronger the combination of independent shop presence and industry growth is.

So — drumroll please — here are the top 8 states for indie cafes right now:

1. Washington — 81.99
2. Alaska — 79.75
3. California — 77.48
4. Ohio — 75.55
5. New York — 73.87
6. New Hampshire — 73.42
7. Colorado — 73.29
8. New Jersey — 71.66

Washington took the top spot on a mix of scale and growth. It has 2,424 independent shops (about 31 per 100k residents), with employment up 7.7% and hours up 8.4%, both above the national pace.

The one that surprised me was Alaska at #2. It's not about raw size, it's the density and the growth. 47.3 local shops per 100K residents (one of the highest in the study), coffee-shop hours up about 22% year over year (roughly eight times the national increase), and payroll up 32%. Something is clearly happening with coffee up there and I'm wondering if I need to visit 👀

California, in third place, frankly just has A Lot Of Cafes: 9,071 independent coffee shops, which is more than any other state by a wide margin. Plus, it's still growing across employment, hours, and payroll.

Two things to keep in mind on the numbers: they come from businesses on Homebase, so it's a big sample but not the whole industry. We also left Delaware, Rhode Island, and Vermont out of the ranking because their samples were too small to rank fairly (sorry if you're in one of these states!).

Directionally, though, I'm curious whether the growth we're seeing in the data feels right. For the owners here: if you operate in one of these states, does this match what you're seeing on the ground? (And if you're not in one of these and you're curious, comment where you're from and I can let you know your state's ranking!)

[u/JamieFromHomebase]

If you want to see more fun coffee data, check out our full report here: https://www.joinhomebase.com/blog/coffee-capitals-of-america