Every day in Italy over 95 million cups of coffee are drunk: on average 1.6 per person per day, which in one year make about 5.5 kg each, consumed more at home than at the bar. With these numbers, Italy is the 7th country in the world for per capita consumption, even if our habits are changing: more and more Italians choose capsules, pods and alternative methods to the mocha. In the first place in the ranking is Finland with a per capita consumption of 10.5 kg.
The first coffee shop in the western world opened in Venice in 1683, under the arcades of Piazza San Marco. A century later, there were already hundreds in the city. And still today coffee is an Italian rite, drunk no longer only in cafés but above all at home, thanks to the evolution of coffee machines.
And if the ground coffee in bags remains the best -selling (68%), pods and capsules are revolutionizing consumption: almost 1 family out of 2 has a coffee machine closed system (they were 29.5% in 2019) and in 2024, coffee pods reached 18% of the sales volume, but 61% of the economic total of sales, due to the price at the clearly higher kg. Soluble coffee, on the other hand, remains little appreciated by our compatriots (less than 5%).
But beyond the type chosen, the data tell us that Italians love coffee. Almost 3 out of 4 Italians drink it daily, and only 5% never drink it, preferring tea, ginseng, deca or barley coffee.
And it is not only a matter of caffeine: 82% appreciate the care in the presentation (from the choice of cup and the spoon to the combination with a glass of water or a chocolate) and 78% love to wait for the mocha to go up or take the espresso at the bar. However, there is not even the appreciation for niche methods, such as Neapolitan Cuccuma, Turkish coffee or the glass alembic.
For 9 out of 10 Italians the coffee is not only a drink, but a daily rite: a habit that gives us the charge in the morning, but also a moment of meeting or a gesture of affection towards the people we offer it.
Overall, over 1,100 cups per second are drinking in Italy. These numbers place Italy in the seventh country in the world for consumption of Coffee Coffee (5.5 kg), behind only Finland (10.5 kg), Sweden (9 kg), Denmark (7.4 kg), Brazil (6.4 kg), Canada and Germany (6.2 kg).
In Italy the coffee is not consumed only, but it is transformed and also exports it. Overall, in this sector about a thousand Italian companies operate and in 2024 the Italian coffee production exceeded 430 thousand tons, for a value of 4.7 billion euros, with an increase of 8.5% compared to 2023.
In 2024, the Italian coffee industry has in fact imported more than 10 million bags of green coffee, especially from Brazil (36%), Vietnam (20%), Uganda (14%) and India (9%). With an increase of over 12 thousand tons compared to the previous year, we confirm ourselves as a third country in the world for the import of green coffee, after USA and Germany. The imported green coffee was then transformed into toasted coffee which in part feeds internal consumption and is partly exported. In detail, in 2024 we exported the consideration of 56 billion coffee cups (+8.9%), especially to the countries of Western Europe (which absorb over 60%).
In short, in Italy coffee is not only a ritual and a preference in consumption, but also an important industry on a global level.
