You may think you drink a lot of coffee, but take one look at the coffee habits of coffee drinkers around the world, and you might change your mind. Americans love to joke about there being a Starbucks location on every corner and needing coffee before any human interaction — well it turns out that is actually a universal feeling. Every day, over a billion people drink a cup of coffee, and most have at least two, with more than two billion cups being consumed worldwide daily. But how does the U.S. actually stack up against the average coffee drinker around the world? It turns out we do drink more coffee than average, and consume more coffee than any other country in total. And yet even with that volume of lattes and cold brews, on a per person basis the U.S. is nowhere near the top, only coming in at 25th place globally in terms of amount of coffee drunk per person.
According to reporting from the National Coffee Association, around 66% of Americans drink at least one cup of coffee per day. Of people who do drink coffee daily, the average consumption is three cups each day, about 50% more than the worldwide average. In total the United States consumes almost 1.7 million tonnes of coffee each year, which is around 3.5 billion pounds. That’s between nine and 10 pounds each year for every person in the country, even including those who don’t drink coffee.
Americans drink an average three cups of coffee a day
When it comes to downing coffee, the Nordic countries are the true champions. While the rankings vary from year-to-year, Finland consistently tops the charts of per person coffee drinking, with a whopping 26 pounds consumed on average each. That’s more than double the average American. The Finns even have different words for all the times of day they consume coffee, including likematkakahvi, meaning “traveling coffee,” or saunakahvi, which is “sauna coffee.” Norway, Iceland, Denmark, and Sweden are also four of the top six, with Northern European neighbors the Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg also being in the top ten. In fact the only non-European country in the top 10 for coffee consumption is Canada. Even down at number 10 Canada still consumes four pounds of coffee more per person than the United States does.
What do these countries all have in common, including Canada? They are all cold, northern countries. Not only does this mean they like a warm beverage, but being that far north means some very short days, some with less than four hours of daylight, and caffeine is a real help in staying awake through the darkest times of the year. So while Americans really do love our homemade cafe lattes and whole bean espresso packets, we don’t have geography pushing us to drink coffee in quite the same way. But that’s okay, three cups a day is probably more than enough caffeine for one day anyway.
