We talk about coffee a lot online. In 2022, well over 300k people talk about the drink every week on Twitter and Reddit. That number looks to be growing too. There’s been a steady uptick in coffee chat since mid-2019 and there are no signs of it stopping. For April of this year, coffee mentions were up 15% compared to 2021.

This is good news for the world’s coffee shops and suppliers. Based on our data, the online coffee conversation really gets going towards the end of August as we move into fall. If interest holds until then, it’s looking to be a bumper year for cafes. We can’t even imagine what the queues will look like come Pumpkin Spice Latte Day.

The next question is when we drink coffee. We decided to take a look at the United States, United Kingdom, and Australia to see how they compare. When it comes to the hour of the day, coffee talk is at its highest between the hours of 10am and 12pm across all three countries. But when it comes to days of the week, there are some differences.

In the US, coffee day is Wednesday, in the UK it’s Tuesday, and in Australia it’s Monday. What’s also interesting is the spread. In the US and the UK, there’s not that much difference during the week, meanwhile in Australia coffee interest drops off a fair bit after Tuesday. It looks like those in Australia only need coffee to start the week, but not to get them through it.

Finally, what type of coffee do we like the most? We picked out some of the most common types and then worked out their net sentiment. We did this by excluding neutral mentions and comparing the shares of positive and negative mentions. As an example, if a coffee type’s mentions were 60% positive and 40% negative, its net sentiment would be 20.

Cortado tops the list with a healthy lead, but it’s clearly still in its hipster stage at the moment. It has by far the fewest mentions, but its popularity has been growing over the years. Expect to see it on more menus as the year wears on.

While its net sentiment isn’t as high, we think it’s safe to say an espresso is the most popular coffee type at the moment. With 262k mentions in a year and a net sentiment of 14, it’s a very strong showing.

At the other end of our scale is the latte. Lattes are a popular choice with a relatively high mention volume, but people aren’t always happy with what they get. We also found a lot of complaints around cost too. Cafes take note!

What should we cover next?

Is there a topic, trend, or industry you’d like us to feature in the Brandwatch Bulletin? We want to hear your ideas to make sure our readers are getting what they want. We may even ask to interview you if you’re involved with the topic.

Send any and all ideas to [email protected] and let’s talk.

Thanks for reading

That’s it for today, but we’ll be back next Friday. If you were forwarded this email and want in on the action, get subscribed to the Brandwatch Bulletin now.

Stay safe,

The Brandwatch Bulletin team