America’s coffee cup is half full

Why the U.S. coffee market may still be far from saturated

Brought to us by our good friends at MarketWatch & Jeremy Olshan

America’s coffee cup seems filled to the rim.

Hot or iced, drip, French press, espresso, Chemex or Keurig, each of us downs about 23 gallons of joe a year on average. It’s in our blood. It’s also on our streets, where Starbucks(US:SBUX)  outposts outnumber hospitals and colleges. And even on our resumes: 161,000 people list “coffee” as a skill on LinkedIn. See: Coffee as a skill on Linkedin

But the truth is, our cup is half empty. We could be drinking a lot more coffee and, in fact, we used to. In 1946, when America’s thirst for coffee peaked, each of us swallowed about 48 gallons a year on average, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture — more than twice current consumption. “We’d drink coffee with breakfast, coffee with lunch, and coffee with dinner,” says John Sicher, publisher of Beverage Digest. “And mostly, we’d drink it at home.”

What makes midcentury America’s passion for coffee all the more amazing is what passed for a decent cup back then.

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