Coffee Overtakes Tea as England’s Most Consumed Drink

More Britons are now drinking coffee than tea.

Those are the results of a survey by the statistics website Statista, conducted earlier this year and released last month.

Java has been creeping up on Britain’s most famously consumed beverage — that would be tea — for years now. In 2021, Statista found the beverages were in a statistical dead heat, and how it seems coffee has a slight edge.

Out of a survey of more than 24,000 Britons, 69% of Gen Xers said they regularly drink coffee, while 64% said they regularly drink tea.

The results were similar across generations, with 76% of Baby Boomers saying they regularly drink coffee, while 74% said they regularly drink tea.

The sample size is admittedly small, but cafe chains have been aggressively expanding on the island nation in recent years, according to the New York Times.

North American companies like Starbucks and the British chain Costa Coffee first took roots in the 90s but are now nearly as ubiquitous as coffee shops in the United States.

Newer coffeehouses in cities like Oxford — such as the Missing Bean — are now powering the trend, driven by the desire for higher-end coffee, according to the Times.

Three decades ago, “British people didn’t want to take any risks,” Ham Raz, who owns The Grand Cafe, a coffeehouse in Oxford, told the New York Times. “Now everybody is doing coffee and people’s behavior is changing.”

Liz Coleman, who is 31 and lives in Oxford, told the Times she needs a regular jolt of caffeine to get through her day.

“Tea has my heart,” she said. “But I can’t live without coffee.”