Apparently that old personal finance advice about making your coffee at home finally stuck, because the newest trend in caffeine starts in your kitchen.

But it’s not just about penny pinching amid rising coffee prices — the pandemic had a lot to do with it:

• Around 30% of remote workers have bought a new coffee machine since the start of the pandemic.
• In 2022, the National Coffee Association’s Data Trends report found that 84% of coffee drinkers had coffee at home daily, up 4% compared to 2020.
• Espresso consumption has risen 30% since the pandemic — a signal that more people have machines at home.

And brands like Keurig and Nespresso have seen growth in North America over the last year. Keurig says it expanded to 38m+ US households in 2022.

But it’s not your average coffee…

… Consumers want premium, specialized experiences while at home.

This means recreating the coffeehouse aesthetic; Pinterest predicts that “cafe core” will be a 2024 trend across age groups. The app saw a 1.12k% increase in searches for “Coffee bar styling” and a 145% spike in “Coffee station decor” between 2021 and 2023.

To make their fancy-pants coffees, per Mintel, consumers will prioritize complementary products (e.g., flavored syrups or creamers) and high-end appliances like those from Fellow, which raised $30m in funding last year.

And, per usual…

… Gen Z is leading the charge on social media.

An estimated 49% of Gen Z consumers learn about coffee on TikTok, where the hashtag #coffee has 71.4B+ views and #coffeestationidea has 62.4m+ with users showing off carefully curated home coffee station setups.

The more influencers share coffee recipes and tools online, the less consumers will need to run to Starbucks for their iced brown sugar shaken espressos. (The chain lost 9.4% of its market value this month, a loss of ~$12B.)

Now, if we could just kick that Starbucks cake pop habit, we could finally buy that house.

26k+: The number of complaints customers filed against US airlines in the first five months of 2023, up 100%+ YoY. Airlines and air traffic control centers continue to face staffing shortages, an issue that arose amid the pandemic. For those of you traveling for the holidays, good luck.

$270m+: The estimated cost of Mark Zuckerberg’s Hawaii compound. Despite strict NDAs binding those working on it, Wired sussed out that the ~1.4k-acre “techno-Xanadu” contains 12+ buildings with 30 bedrooms, 30 bathrooms, offices, conference rooms, an industrial-sized kitchen, a gym, spa, and tennis court, plus several tree houses and, most importantly, a 5k-square-foot underground bunker.

28: The number of books (out of ~300k titles) that sold 500k+ copies in the US in 2022. Notably, eight of those books were by romance/YA author Colleen Hoover, whose novel It Ends with Us sold 2.7m+ copies.

19%: The percentage of Americans who think AI will have a major impact on their job over the next 20 years, per Pew Research Center. But when it comes to careers in journalism, graphic design, and software engineering, over half of respondents thought AI would have a major impact. Gulp.