BOSTON, USA – Toast, the all-in-one digital platform built for restaurants, today announced its Q1 2024 Restaurant Trends Report, providing insight into the overall state of the U.S. restaurant industry through an analysis of aggregated data from selected cohorts of restaurants and in select U.S. cities on the Toast platform, which serves approximately 112,000 restaurant locations as of March 31, 2024.
Key takeaways:
- In Q1 2024, guests across the U.S. paid an average of $3.08 for a cup of regular coffee, $5.14 for cold brew, $5.46 for lattes, and $3.74 for tea.1
- Tea is more popular than regular coffee in 30 states.2
- Saturday breakfast transactions grew 6% YOY (year-over-year), and Mondays dipped 4% YOY.3
- In Chicago, servers and bartenders at full-service restaurants earned a median hourly wage of $9.48 in Q1 2024, which is up from $9.00 in Q1 2022. 4
- In Washington, D.C., servers and bartenders at full-service restaurants earned a median wage of approximately $8 in Q1 2024, up from $5.05 in Q1 2022.4
- In April, quick-service restaurant workers’ hourly wages in California increased 4% month-over-month, from $17 to $17.75.5
- Delaware was the most generous state overall for tipping, with an average total tipping percentage of 22.1%.6
Menu insights for the Restaurant Trends Report are powered by a Toast benchmarking tool, which leverages an AI-based classification tool and allows users to compare restaurant and menu category performance against aggregated data from Toast restaurants.
The price of coffee, tea, cold brew, and lattes in all 50 states
Whether it’s a hot cup of joe, a delicately crafted latte, or a comforting cup of tea, Americans are known for their love of caffeinated beverages. But in recent months, there’s been an increased focus on the price of coffee in particular, as extreme weather has affected harvests and sent global coffee prices soaring, according to the Wall Street Journal.
To understand how much Americans pay per cup, Toast analyzed the average price of regular coffee, cold brew, lattes, and tea in each U.S. state. On average, consumers paid $3.08 for a cup of regular coffee, $5.14 for cold brew, $5.46 for lattes, and $3.74 for tea in Q1 2024.
Hawaii had the most expensive coffee in the country, with an average price of $4.89 — approximately 59% higher than the national average. California was the second-most expensive, averaging about $1 less than Hawaii at $3.88, which is 26% higher than the national average. On the other end of the spectrum, the average price for a cup of coffee in Nebraska in Q1 2024 was just $2.12 — 31% lower than the national average.
Toast noticed similar trends with cold brew and tea, with Hawaii and California pushing the top end of pricing, but Alaska bumped California out of the number two spot for the most expensive latte at $6.09. What is the average price of a latte in Hawaii? A whopping $6.69. The sky-high prices of lattes in Hawaii and Alaska are likely driven by the price of milk and the remoteness of the two states. Prices for milk in these states are among the highest in the nation, and shipping goods such as espresso to these regions only increases those prices.
View the full report on the Toast Newsroom.
