Dubliners love a cup of coffee more than any other capital city in the world according to a recent survey by online retailer BrewSmartly.
Well, any other capital city in the world other than Amsterdam that is, and their coffee shops famously also legally sell marijuana so their clients may not be as coffee-obsessed as we think.
The rise of coffee shops on high streets around the world has been swift over the past 10-20 years.
American giants Starbucks and British company Costa Coffee have a presence in most major cities, while there are also numerous small independent coffee shops to be found.
Coffee experts BrewSmartly scored each city on a number of different criteria.
Firstly, they measured how many coffee shops each city had, in relation to each 100,000 people living in it.
Dublin actually scored higher in this category than Amsterdam with 181 coffee shops per 100,000 people compared to 116 in the Dutch capital.
However, there were more influences at play in calculating the final score for each city.
Next up is the quality of the coffee being served. Interestingly, the Cayman Islands scored highest in this category, but fell down on the quantity of coffee shops per 100,000 people – only seven.
The quality of the coffee served is open to interpretation and taste, and BrewSmartly configured the scores based on online reviews.
The final consideration was the value of the coffee imported per capita. In this category, Dubliners paid less than any of the other top 5 cities on importing their coffee, at $94 per capita. That is considerably less than the cost of Amsterdam’s coffee imports per capita at $159.
Once all these factors were considered, each city was designated a score, and Dublin just missed out narrowly to Amsterdam with a total of 3.91/5 compared to 4.03/5.
The rest of the top five was made up by European capitals Paris, Bern and Prague. In fact, it was only American Samoa’s Pago Pago and New Zealand’s Wellington that were from outside Europe in the top ten cities named.
Another points of interest from the survey was the tie between giants London and Tokyo in 19th place. Both cities had fewer coffee shops per 100,000 people than Dublin, but served up a tastier drink.
Perhaps surprisingly, US capital Washington only placed at 18th in the list.
What is clear from the study is that coffee is definitely a drink loved around the world, with entries in the top 40 from Panama, Hong Kong, Australia amongst others.
In summary, it seems that Dubliners certainly love their coffee, and have plenty of outlets to choose from. However, the drinks served in our capital are not of the same quality as the refreshments available elsewhere in the world.
Hmm. Cup of tea anyone?
If you like to read the full report on the study then visit brewsmartly.com.