When you think of the top coffee cities in America, certainly places like Seattle — home to Starbucks — and cafe-friendly San Francisco come to mind. Well, now San Jose could say “hold my beer,” or maybe “hold my cappuccino.”
The Silicon Valley city came in at No. 2 — behind only Portland, Oregon — in a ranking of the top coffee cities in the United States by Clever, a real estate data firm. The top five were rounded out by San Diego (third), Denver (fourth) and San Francisco (fifth). Seattle ranked a stunning 10th, behind cities like Hartford, Conn. and Providence, Rhode Island.
Now, much like San Jose’s lofty barbecue ranking of a couple of years ago, data-driven rankings like these don’t always square up with reality, and that’s especially true in this case. Clever’s “Best Coffee Cities” rankings seem to be sorted by the average price of a cappuccino in each city ($4.04 for Portand, $4.17 for San Jose), making San Jose’s runner-up status pretty dubious. Still, the city may actually be a lot more caffeinated than you’d think.
Be’Anka Ashaolu, who opened Nirvana Soul in downtown San Jose in 2021 with her sister, Jeronica Macey, said she’s glad to see some statistics backing up the experience she sees customers having.
“The San Jose coffee community and culture has definitely been growing over the last few years; I’m happy to see us included!” she said. “There are coffee companies here that have been at it for a really long time, and many are nationally recognized for having great coffee.”
The biggest factor in San Jose’s favor in the survey results seemed to be the proliferation of coffee shops: 29.6 per 100,000 residents — higher than any other city in the rankings, and 135% more than the average of 12.6. That adds up to about 300 java joints in San Jose proper, and probably double that if you widen it out to Santa Clara County. Sure, that’s a lot of drive-through Starbucks, but there are also plenty of local favorites in there like Nirvana Soul, Voyager Craft Coffee, Academic, Philz, Orchard Valley Coffee in Campbell, Great Bear in Los Gatos and countless others.
San Jose lags a bit in the number of coffee roasteries it has, with 0.9 for every 100,000 residents (just above the national average of 0.7). But that could change soon. Nirvana Soul’s Ashalou pointed out that their head roaster, Alex Egan, competed in the U.S. Roasting Championships this past year.
So go ahead and have that second cup of joe, order another latte or spring for a fancy pour-over. It’s a matter of civic pride now.
UPDATE: A spokesperson from Clever contacted me Friday to say the rankings were correct and the problem was a “pasting error” with the cappuccino prices. So, San Jose is indeed the No. 2 coffee city in the county (huzzah!) but its average cappuccino price is actually $5.96, third highest in the top 50 behind Seattle and Minneapolis. Which does feel a lot more like reality.
SV READS GOES LIVE: Silicon Valley Reads will kick off more than 150 free events surrounding this year’s theme, “A Greener Tomorrow Starts Today” with a panel discussion Jan. 31 featuring two of this year’s selected authors, Heather White (“One Green Thing”) and Lily Brooks-Dalton (“The Light Pirate”) and two contributors to the anthology “All We Can Save,” young-adult activist Alexandria Villaseñor and artist Favianna Rodriguez.
The event at De Anza College’s Visual Performing Arts Center starts at 7 p.m., and early arrivals are invited to visit “Sacred Terrain,” an art exhibition at the Euphrat Museum of Art, which is connected to the auditorium. While I’ve moderated the past several kickoff events for Silicon Valley Reads, I’ll be in the audience this year, and NBC Bay Area reporter Damian Trujillo will be handling the questions. It’ll also be live-streamed for those who can’t make it or prefer to avoid crowds right now.
White and Brooks-Dalton will visit Santa Clara County libraries in the days after the kickoff event, and there will be more events in the days and weeks to follow surrounding the theme of sustainability, the three main selections and four other titles aimed at younger readers. You can get a full list of the programs at siliconvalleyreads.org/calendar.
ART AND ABOUT: The Triton Museum of Art in Santa Clara has an artists’ reception Saturday to celebrate the opening of four new exhibitions: “An Ode to Planets,” by Yunan Ma; “Identity Theft and Beyond” by Chukes; “The Punctum Void: A Miha Sarani Retrospective”; and “The Same Streets Everyday” by Lost San Jose, also known as photographer Josh Marcotte. The reception runs from 2 to 4 p.m., so you’ll be home in time for the 49ers-Packers game — that other big event going on in Santa Clara on Saturday.
