Crema Data · 2026
The State of Coffee
29,000+ specialty coffee shops. 285+ cities. 11.6 million Google reviews. Here's what American coffee actually looks like.
Coverage
29,000 Shops. One Map.
Every bubble is a city in Crema's database. Size reflects shop count. Color reflects average rating — the darkest dots are the highest-quality coffee cities. The coasts are loud. The middle of the country is quietly doing fine.
Volume
The Usual Suspects
Chicago edges out New York for the most tracked specialty coffee shops in a single city — a result that surprises more people than it probably should. Portland, Seattle, and Denver make the top ten despite being a fraction of the size of the coastal metros. Coffee density matters more than population.
Quality
The Overachievers
The cities with the highest average ratings are not the ones you'd put on a coffee map. Fort Smith, Arkansas. Kearney, Nebraska. Walla Walla, Washington. Smaller cities with fewer tourists and more regulars tend to push shops toward quality — there's nowhere to hide behind foot traffic.
Ratings
Remarkably Consistent
Specialty coffee is not a bell curve. It's a ski slope pointing right. The vast majority of shops cluster between 4.4 and 4.8 stars — a 0.4-point range that contains over half of every shop in this database. Bad coffee shops don't survive long enough to make it into a database like this.
Amenities
What You'll Actually Find
Nearly every specialty coffee shop serves an espresso drink. Beyond that, it gets interesting. Most are built for lingering, not grabbing. Fewer than 1 in 4 confirm wifi — not because they don't have it, but because nobody thinks to mention it anymore. Dog friendly is still a rarity. Pour over remains a badge of honor for a dedicated third.
States
Every State Has Opinions
California has 4,852 shops — more than the next three states combined. But quantity and quality don't always travel together. Kansas and South Dakota lead the nation in average rating despite having a fraction of the volume. The South is quietly excellent. Nevada is an outlier in both directions.
About this data.All figures are pulled from Crema's database of active, non-hidden specialty coffee shops as of May 2026. Shop counts, ratings, and review totals are sourced from the Google Places API. Tags are a combination of AI inference and Google attribute data. Cities with fewer than 5 shops are excluded from city-level rankings. Data refreshes with each deploy.