The Next Wave: Predicting the future of coffee in New York City

By Mario Aksiyote

In this article we look at New York City through the lens of coffee in an attempt to explore a fundamental question of spatial economics: how are the locations of businesses determined?

The geography of economic activity is a critical force that shapes cities around the world. From infrastructure to housing, urban transformation is often influenced by the location of specific businesses. Coffee shops in New York City are no exception.

Using data from dozens of different sources and techniques from a wide range of technologies and disciplines including game theory, machine learning, natural language processing, statistics, and urbanism, we formulated a model that predicts optimal coffee shop locations in New York City. Our findings reveal that the Bronx, Queens, and Brooklyn all show more economic promise than Manhattan, and resonate with recent population and job growth outside of Manhattan. In this article, we describe the iterative development of our predictive models and reveal specific forecasts of what the future of coffee in New York City might look like.

But First, A Little Background…

Caffe Reggio in 1974 (Credit: Caffe Reggio)

New York City revolves around coffee. Considering there are 3,389 coffee shops in NYC, it is no wonder the city never sleeps. Dating back to the mid-1600s, while other colonies preferred drinking tea, New Yorkers were primarily drinking coffee. In the early-1800s, New York was one of the largest coffee roasting centers in the United States. More recently, mobile startup MassiveHealth found that New Yorkers drink 6.7 times the amount of coffee consumed by the average denizen of any other US city. If you’re a New Yorker, you’re probably drinking a cup right now.