The cheapest cities in the world for a cup of coffee
An independent study into the worldwide costs of a cup of coffee has found that Rio de Janiero and Sao Paulo have the lowest average prices per cup anywhere on the planet.
This might come as no surprise, with Brazil being one of the world’s largest importers of beans on the planet.
Unfortunately for us Britons, a 10,000 mile round-trip is not likely to be on the cards anytime soon…
With an average price of just 84p in Rio, compared to £1.43 in Dundee (the UK’s cheapest coffee city), we aren’t doing too badly here in Blighty all things considered.
The study was conducted by Berlin-based, Service Partner One, who looked into the drinking habits of millions of the world’s coffee drinkers to produce this study.
70 million cups of coffee are consumed every single day in the UK alone, and more than 80% of us visit a coffee shop at least once a week.
So for bargain hunters and coffee enthusiasts, and as coffee machine and supply experts such as ourselves, this is going be a very interesting study!
Ranking 75 countries into order of value for money, the index found that four UK cities, Dundee, Sheffield, Edinburgh and Liverpool rank within the top 20 of the world’s cheapest.
Unfortunately for Londoners, they are paying the highest average price in the UK for a cup of Joe. But if we’re honest, we’re not too surprised. Everything is more expensive in London…
Those poor Swiss are paying the most though, with Zurich based Starbucks coffee shops charging a whopping £5.72 per cup on average. We have to say, that is rather scandalous! But the average an independent shop in the same city is a more palatable £2.92; but still the most expensive average price of anywhere in the world.
Service One also provided information on the average coffee consumption per capita, with the Scandinavian states coming top by some margin.
Finland consume a mammoth 9.6 kg of coffee per person, with Norway some way behind at 7.2 kg!
Just to put that into context, the UK consumes on average 1.7 kg of coffee per person, per year. That’s five and a half times less! We need to up our game Great Britain!
Whilst Brazil might boast the best average coffee price across the board, Colombia actually has the lowest average coffee shop price at £1.36.
See the full table below:
# | City | Country | Office1 | Starbucks2 | Coffee Shop3 | Home4 | Ø-Cost | Consumption (kg/Capita)5 |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
1 | Rio de Janeiro | Brazil | 0.12 £ | 1.21 £ | 1.95 £ | 0.09 £ | 0.84 £ | 4.8 |
2 | Sao Paulo | Brazil | 0.12 £ | 1.21 £ | 1.99 £ | 0.09 £ | 0.85 £ | 4.8 |
3 | Lima | Peru | 0.11 £ | 2.35 £ | 2.18 £ | 0.09 £ | 1.18 £ | 1.0 |
4 | Milan 6 | Italy | 0.29 £ | 3.16 £ | 1.46 £ | 0.19 £ | 1.28 £ | 3.4 |
5 | Seville | Spain | 0.32 £ | 3.16 £ | 1.40 £ | 0.26 £ | 1.29 £ | 3.0 |
6 | Ha Noi | Vietnam | 0.35 £ | 2.71 £ | 1.84 £ | 0.29 £ | 1.30 £ | 0.7 |
7 | Valencia | Spain | 0.32 £ | 3.16 £ | 1.57 £ | 0.26 £ | 1.33 £ | 3.0 |
8 | Guatemala City | Guatemala | 0.22 £ | 2.67 £ | 2.29 £ | 0.18 £ | 1.34 £ | 2.0 |
9 | Kuala Lumpur | Malaysia | 0.09 £ | 2.78 £ | 2.60 £ | 0.08 £ | 1.39 £ | 3.9 |
10 | Manila | Philippines | 0.23 £ | 2.38 £ | 2.79 £ | 0.19 £ | 1.40 £ | 1.2 |
Chart data provided by Service Partner ONE.
1 Cost of office coffee calculated via the method above, including the average service and purchase costs of coffee machine over a relevant time period.
2 Price for Starbucks calculated from an average cost of Grande Latte in several locations within each city. Prices may differ at same-brand outlets.
3 Price for independent coffee was calculated by averaging the cost of a medium cappuccino, or similar drink where necessary, from several independent outlets within each city.
4 Cost of home coffee calculated by taking an average cost of a 500g pack of 100% Colombian ground coffee from several outlets in the locality, divided by the recommended serving size for one cup of coffee.
5Annual consumption figures from CaffeineInformer report based on statistics from EuroMonitor. Based on most recently reported figures.
6 Starbucks not yet available in Italy. Milan Starbucks cost based on estimation of future price, taking into account costs from similar cities.
Currency exchanges true on 25th October 2016.