SEATTLE – In honor of National Coffee Day, Redfin, the customer-first real estate brokerage, teamed up with Foursquare to find the 10 best cities for coffee snobs. While plenty of national chains serve up free cups of joe on this ultra-caffeinated holiday, many believe that not all coffee is created equal. For some coffee lovers, only “indie,” or independently owned, high-end coffee shops will do. Redfin and Foursquare joined forces to help these discerning coffee addicts.
The cities on this list have the most indie coffee shops per capita, according to Foursquare data. (Indie coffee shops are defined as those with fewer than 10 retail locations.) Here are the top 10 cities for coffee snobs:
1. Seattle, Washington
2. Portland, Oregon
3. Boulder, Colorado
4. San Francisco, California
5. Denver, Colorado
6. San Diego, California
7. Madison, Wisconsin
8. Austin, Texas
9. Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minnesota
10. Sacramento, California
To read the full report and see the highest-rated coffee shop in each metro area, as well as the ZIP code with the highest concentration of indie coffee shops and the median home price in each of those ZIP codes (as well as the median home price in lattes, just for fun), please click on this link.
Methodology
For this report, Foursquare evaluated 38 major metropolitan areas to come up with the 10 that have the most independently owned coffee shops per capita, then found one ZIP code in each area with the highest concentration. “Chain” coffee shops, those with more than 10 locations, were excluded from the data. Redfin pulled sales information for the past year to find the median sale price of homes in each of the 10 ZIP codes, then translated that median price to lattes using $4 as the average latte price. The highest-rated indie cafe in each metro area was determined using Foursquare’s rating system. Foursquare ratings are numbers, not stars, and take a bunch of different things into account, such as likes, dislikes, popularity, loyalty, local expertise and user tips.
