Long Beach was placed behind Portland (#1) and Orlando (#2) as the best coffee city in the country by WalletHub. Comparing the 100 largest cities across 12 key indicators of coffee-lover friendliness, Long Beach landed in the Number Three spot—something that is not surprising to locals and visitors alike, given our coffee game has never been stronger.
Here’s how WalletHub’s analysis read:
Long Beach is the third-best coffee city, and like the other top cities, it boasts a very high number of coffee shop options, especially ones rated at least 4.5 stars out of 5. Long Beach also has the 24th-highest share of coffee shops that offer free Wi-Fi per capita. One way that Long Beach residents and visitors demonstrate their love of java is through their search history, as they search Google for ‘coffee’ more than people in all but six other cities. In addition, Long Beach residents spend an average of over $171 per year on coffee. Finally, Long Beach has the 14th-highest percentage of residents with an espresso or cappuccino machine, and the 28th-highest percentage with an electric coffee grinder.
Of course, we already knew this.
From collaborations and partnerships to innovative drink creation, Long Beach has become a hub for caffeine fiends.
It could be the insanely innovative drinks at Our Spot, where coffee is treated as a culinary ingredient rather than solely as a means of waking up. It could be Recreational, whose history has included everything from hopped iced coffee to grapefruit concoctions. Or it could be CoffeeDrunk, whose seemingly endless collaborations—including a recently boozey one with Ambitious Ales—have come to define its ethos. It could be Aroma di Roma refusing to move past its Belmont Shore shop until someone within the local coffee game was ready to take it on.
No matter how you dice it, Long Beach’s love of coffee (and coffee roasting) has long defined part of its culinary character.
The methodology to measure Long Beach’s coffee lovey-dovey-ness.
To find the best cities for coffee lovers, WalletHub analyzes the 100 most populated U.S. cities across 12 key metrics, each weighted by importance and graded on a 100-point scale. A city’s overall score reflects its weighted average across all metrics, with 100 representing the most favorable conditions for coffee enthusiasts.
Only the “city proper” is considered; surrounding metro areas are excluded. For metrics marked with an asterisk (*), WalletHub applies the square root of population size to avoid skewing results from small variations across cities.
The metrics themselves…
- Average price per pack of coffee (full weight, ~7.14 points)
- Average price of a cappuccino (full weight, ~7.14 points)
- Average household spending on coffee (full weight, ~7.14 points)
- Share of adult coffee drinkers* (full weight, ~7.14 points)
- Measures adults who reported drinking ready-to-drink coffee within the past six months.
- Share of households that own coffee makers (full weight, ~7.14 points)
- Includes ownership of grinders, single-cup/pod brewers, and espresso/cappuccino machines.
- Affordable coffee shops, cafés & coffee houses rated 4.5+ stars per capita* (double weight, ~14.29 points)
- Coffee shops, cafés & coffee houses per capita* (double weight, ~14.29 points)
- Coffee & tea manufacturers per capita* (full weight, ~7.14 points)
- Coffee shops with free Wi-Fi per capita* (full weight, ~7.14 points)
- Donut shops per capita* (full weight, ~7.14 points)
- Google search traffic for “coffee” (full weight, ~7.14 points)
- Measured as a share of the national average.
- Presence of coffee-centric events (full weight, ~7.14 points)
- Composite measure: 1 if the city hosts events like Caffeine Crawl, Coffee Fest, or the U.S. Coffee Championships; 0 if it does not.
Sources: Data were collected as of August 20, 2025, from the U.S. Census Bureau, Council for Community and Economic Research, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Numbeo, Google Trends, Yelp, Esri Updated Demographics, GfK MRI, Caffeine Crawl, Coffee Fest, and U.S. Coffee Championships.
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