Coffee could be said to be the gas in the workworld’s fuel tank...many of us need it to be coherent and effective. And if you’re a student or an artist, you probably also need a mid-afternoon sit-down with the beverage. Its importance can’t be overestimated, so when we saw this list of the 100 best coffee shops in the world, we knew we had to hasten to examine the findings.
The No. 1 cafe in the world is across the pond (and then the other pond) in Australia, but we garnered the No. 2 spot: the Onyx Coffee Lab in Arkansas. To be on the list, coffee houses must demonstrate quality of coffee, barrista expertise, excellent customer service, innovation, a pleasant atmosphere and ambiance, sustainable practices, quality of food and pastries and consistency. Coffee drinkers are urged to vote in a public voting phase (limited to just one vote), then an expert panel assesses the nominees, and then the votes are weighted (we, the public, get 30 percent of the final scores while the experts contribute 70 percent and then the ranked list is created.
Established in 2012, the Onyx Coffee Lab travels the world to acquire their beans (currently sourcing from Peru, Ecuador and Colombia), roasting them stateside for a craft coffee experience. Unusually, Onyx also gives drinkers information on each coffee, sharing “its pricing and trade data, meaning you can see what we paid for it, what it scored at, who we bought it from, and other details right on its product page. This is not only something we are very proud of but is also a practice that is rare to see in coffee,” reads the company’s website. The lab also educates its customers, with coffee classes such as latté art foundation, intro to espresso drinks and pour-over basics.
Onyx has locations in Fayetteville, Rogers, and Bentonville (and an additional M’onyx inside the Momentary contemporary art space in Bentonville, and served inside the Springdale restaurant Hail Fellow Well Met). There are also two Bionics (“by Onyx”) locations, in Bentonville and inside Northwest Arkansas National Airport by Gate A1. And here’s where things get special, because based on the gorgeous photos on the website, the Rogers headquarters is a light-filled space with warm earth tones, green plants, muted exposed brick walls and gleaming hardwood floors—as calming as that first sip each morning.
Interesting to note: four of the 14 U.S. coffee houses that appear on this list are in Alabama. And crunching the math, that means that 4 percent of the world's best coffee houses are there, too! Either Alabama’s super caffeinated or it has a really enthusiastic groundswell of nominating patrons.
Other U.S. coffee houses on the list are: Prevail Coffee, Alabama (17); Savaya Coffee Market, Arizona (21); Panther Coffee, Florida (30); Push x Pull, Oregon (34); Presta Coffee Roasters, Arizona (44); Domestique, Alabama (47); Stumptown Coffee Roasters, Oregon (52); Café Grumpy, New York (57); Seeds Coffee Company, Alabama (66); Silk City Coffee, Connecticut (67); Turbo Coffee, Alabama (72); Story and Soil Coffee, Connecticut (88) and Tinta y Café, Florida (98).
These are the 10 best coffee shops in the world:
- Toby’s Estate Coffee Roasters, Sydney
- Onyx Coffee Lab, Arkansas
- Gota Coffee Experts, Vienna
- Proud Mary Coffee, Melbourne
- Tim Wendelboe, Oslo
- Apartment Coffee, Singapore
- Kawa, Paris
- Coffee Anthology, Brisbane
- Story of Ono, Petaling Jaya
- Tropicalia Coffee, Bogota