The History of Coffee in America

Hey guys, here’s another info-graphic I found:

http://coffeecupnews.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/coffee.png

This one is discussing the impact that coffee has had on America, and unlike the other one this one has sources listed at the bottom.

The parts that I thought were pretty interesting and something I hadn’t really thought about is that before coffee came to America, tea was the drink of choice. After it arrived, they were on equal footing until the Boston Tea Party, when tea became unpatriotic and coffee became the most popular drink (after water). A spot that it still enjoys today.

The invention of “instant” coffee by Satori Kato, can be seen as both a blessing (for  allowing those who don’t have access to their gear to get a coffee fix) or a curse (based on the taste of most of “instant” coffees).

A couple of the other statistics are things that we’ve covered on Roaste before, but are still pretty interesting to me. 

First, there’s the statistic that the average American spends 45 hours a year waiting in line for coffee. That seemed pretty crazy to me, but then I actually calculated a bit and realized that if you spend 10 minutes every morning making coffee that’s actually ~61 hours a year. Although, I suppose this is just the time spent waiting in line and not counting walking/driving to the coffee house.

Second, the statistic that the average American spends $164.71 per year. That means they spend around 45 cents per day on coffee if they drink coffee every day. I’m assuming that this is mostly from drinking supermarket brands at home, and it’s not really something that Roaste.com can compete with price wise I don’t think. Especially if you figure in the earlier statistic that each person drinks 3 cups of coffee per day. Which breaks down to 15 cents per cup. I think we can all agree though that the extra cost is worth it.