The best starting city in Coffee Inc 2 is the one that gives you lots with 10,000+ weekly foot traffic for under about $1,000 a week, and on the most complete city-by-city lot survey we could find (LevelWinner, Jan 2023) that is Paris, with Tokyo, London and Osaka close behind. As for the Coffee Inc 2 best blend, there is no single magic ratio: Side Labs has never published one, so the winning move is to swap the default beans for the best-value roaster blend on day one, then build your own company blends once you have an office.
This is a sub-guide to our Coffee Inc 2 guide for growing your coffee empire, which covers equipment, staff and expansion. Here we answer just two questions, with the numbers behind each answer. Facts were checked on October 28, 2026 against Coffee Inc 2 version 16.2 on the App Store ($2.99, developer Side Labs LLC).
Table of Contents
Quick answer
- Best starting city on a small budget: Paris. LevelWinner’s survey lists 51 Paris lots at 10,000+ foot traffic, the most of any city, with the cheapest at $885 a week.
- Also strong: Tokyo and Osaka (cheapest 10,000+ lots at $846 and $845 a week) and London (47 lots at 10,000+ traffic, cheapest $889).
- Avoid for your first store: New York (no 10,000+ lot under $1,044 a week) and Amsterdam (only 17 lots reach 10,000 traffic).
- Big budget or hard mode: one experienced player beat the highest difficulty by clustering stores in a single big-money city such as New York or London.
- Best blend early: the default blend has no special qualities, so buy a roaster’s blend with high stats and a low price right away. Beans are a large part of each store’s running costs.
- Best blend later: since version 15.0 you can run several company blends with a priority order, for example a premium single-origin blend and a cheaper daily blend.
New York has plenty of high-traffic lots, but none under $1,044 a week in LevelWinner's survey. Image: Side Labs
Coffee Inc 2 best starting city: the numbers
According to LevelWinner, a new game begins in San Francisco, but you can fly to another city and open your first store there. The city matters because two numbers decide whether a first store survives: foot traffic, the people who find your cafe without any marketing, and weekly rent, a cost you pay every single week. The security deposit is paid once, so it matters much less.
The table below summarises the lot lists in LevelWinner’s Coffee Inc 2 beginner’s guide (January 2023, prices in USD). We counted the lots and picked out the cheapest rents ourselves. Rome, Sydney and Madrid were added later and are not in that survey.
| City | Lots listed | Lots with 10,000+ traffic | Cheapest weekly rent at 10,000+ | LevelWinner’s verdict |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Paris | 87 | 51 | $885 | Decent first city on a low or mid budget |
| London | 73 | 47 | $889 | Good on a low budget; 10,000+ lots get expensive fast |
| Tokyo | 53 | 27 | $846 | One of the best first cities on a low budget |
| Osaka | 58 | 29 | $845 | Ideal on a low budget if you land a recommended lot |
| Chicago | 61 | 31 | $845 | Many high-traffic deals for mid or high budgets |
| Berlin | 55 | 26 | $860 | Cheap lots, few that reach 10,000 traffic |
| San Francisco | 54 | 18 | $889 | Low traffic, and rivals tend to open here |
| Seattle | 51 | 18 | $913 | Fair prices, better deals elsewhere |
| Amsterdam | 69 | 17 | $912 | Mostly low-traffic lots; not ideal to start |
| New York | 53 | 38 | $1,044 | Worst rent-to-traffic ratio for a first shop |
Why Paris comes out on top: it has the deepest pool of lots that clear 10,000 traffic, and plenty of them rent for under $1,000 a week. With that many options, a rival taking one good lot doesn’t wreck your plan. Tokyo and Osaka have the cheapest individual high-traffic lots. LevelWinner singles out Osaka’s Umeda 2-5-9 (lot 50) at 11,234 traffic for $921 a week as the cheapest rent for that much traffic anywhere in the game when it wrote the guide. Take it if you ever see it for lease.
Lot lists can change as competitors lease spots and as the game is updated, so treat the table as a guide to each city’s character, not a fixed price list.
How to judge a lot: foot traffic vs weekly rent
LevelWinner gives a simple ceiling for what a lot is worth. Anything cheaper than the range is a good deal, and anything above it is too expensive:
| Weekly foot traffic | Fair weekly rent |
|---|---|
| Under 8,000 | Don’t lease |
| 8,000-9,000 | $800 or less |
| 9,000-10,000 | $800-$1,000 |
| 10,000-11,000 | $1,000-$2,000 |
| 11,000-12,000 | $2,000-$3,000 |
| 12,000+ | Around $3,000 (avoid lots close to $4,000) |
The reasoning is plain cash flow. LevelWinner notes that a new store can take three weeks or more before it earns anything, so a lower fixed cost buys you time. For the same reason it suggests starting on normal difficulty with 2 competitors and $800,000 of starting capital while you learn. It also warns against opening right next to a rival’s cafe at the start, because any competitor nearby slows a new store’s growth. The same pricing logic shows up in other management sims, such as our Supermarket Simulator pricing guide.
London lists 47 lots with 10,000+ weekly foot traffic, the cheapest at $889 a week. Image: Side Labs
The other approach: one big city, clustered stores
Cheap lots are not the only way to win. In a detailed strategy write-up on Zenn (March 2024, in Japanese), a player describes beating the highest difficulty with 5 competitors until nearly every rival had stopped growing. Their first-city plan works the other way round:
- Borrow as much as the banks allow and open quickly. The player applied at many banks and says only one or two loans were usually approved.
- Pick a city where a lot of money moves. They chose New York and thought London would work too.
- Pay for traffic: lease lots with 12,000+ weekly foot traffic, or failing that 10,800+. Rent is high, but so are sales.
- Stay in one city for roughly 4-7 stores so brand awareness builds up, keeping your own stores far enough apart that they don’t appear in each other’s sales-share lists.
- Cheapest exterior and interior, best equipment, and no paid advertising early on.
Our read: Paris or Tokyo is the forgiving pick for a first save, because low rent leaves room for mistakes. The New York or London rush suits players who already know the game and are willing to carry loans. If you do borrow heavily, note that version 15.4 (June 2026) reworked bankruptcy: companies now get a 4-week insolvency period with warnings before bankruptcy is declared, according to the release notes.
Coffee Inc 2 best blend: how blends work now
Coffee blends got a big rework in version 15.0 (October 2025). Here is what the developer’s Coffee Plantation announcement confirms:
- Before 15.0, a company could only buy beans from roasters or mix commercial beans into its own blend. Now it can also grow beans on its own plantations.
- Every store serves coffee from the beans your company has in stock. You can combine harvested and commercial beans into several company blends.
- Each blend gets a priority, and stores automatically use the highest-priority blend that is in stock. The developer’s own example is a premium single-origin blend alongside a cheaper daily blend.
- Beans have five taste traits: aroma, acidity, body, bitterness and flavor. Coffee plants have five growing traits: lifespan, yield, stability, weather resistance and pest resistance.
- A new Supply Chain division manages bean inventory and blends from headquarters, and it is also where you invest in bean breeding.
Side Labs has not published an “optimal” blend ratio. Its July 2026 tutorial post says the new tutorial teaches the controls but deliberately not the strategy. A player question on ChapterCheats asking for the best percentage for a 4-star custom blend has gone unanswered since 2022. So be wary of any guide that hands you an exact recipe without a source.
Best blend setup for each stage of the game
| Stage | Best blend source | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Week 1 | The best-value roaster blend you can find | The default blend has no special qualities (LevelWinner). Look at roasting companies in several regions for beans with high stats at a low price, and switch whenever you find better (Zenn). |
| First office | Your own custom blend from commercial beans | An office floor unlocks your own blends. Mixing lets you trade a little quality for a lower cost per cup. |
| Multi-city chain | Two blends with priorities (premium + daily) | The developer’s own example. If the premium blend runs out, stores fall back to the next blend instead of running dry. |
| Late game | Your plantation beans, possibly bred | Your bean cost becomes your own running costs plus depreciation, divided by the harvest. It only beats market prices once harvests are flowing. |
The cost logic matters most early. The Zenn player points out that beans take a fairly large share of each store’s operating costs, so cutting the bean price helps every cup you sell. Better beans are also how you attract more customers and turn them into regulars, according to LevelWinner. If one roaster offers higher stats and a lower price than your current beans, there’s no trade-off: switch.
Plantations: when your own beans pay off
Plantations are the late-game blend upgrade, but the developer is clear that they start out expensive:
- Seven origins: Minas Gerais (Brazil), Medellín (Colombia), Blue Mountain (Jamaica), Yirgacheffe (Ethiopia), Nyeri (Kenya), Buôn Ma Thuột (Vietnam) and Takengon (Indonesia). Each one differs in land price, farm size, yield, climate, harvest season and the varieties it can grow.
- No beans for the first few years after planting, while costs keep piling up. The first harvest books all those years of capital spending as inventory, so early beans have the cost structure of a premium bean.
- Harvests come once or twice a year depending on the climate. Beans keep until the next season. Stock past its limit is sold automatically on the wholesale market, which pays more than your production cost but less than retail.
- Getting there: origins and resorts don’t have direct flights from every city. You fly to a major city on the same continent first, for example San Francisco or New York for Blue Mountain, then take a regional flight (Side Labs airport guide). The private jet pack lets you fly to any destination directly.
In practice, keep a commercial blend as your fallback in the priority list until your first harvests come in, so a plantation’s slow start never leaves a store without coffee. If you enjoy this kind of long-term empire planning, our Business Empire: RichMan guide and our list of the best tycoon games on mobile are good next reads.
FAQ
What is the best plantation in Coffee Inc 2?
There’s no official ranking. Side Labs says each of the seven origins differs in land price, farm size, yield, climate, harvest season and varieties, and suggests either focusing on one origin for top beans or spreading across several to lower your risk.
Can you serve more than one blend at once?
Since version 15.0 you can keep several company blends. Stores use the highest-priority blend that is in stock, so a second blend works as a backup as well as a cheaper option.
Which cities are in Coffee Inc 2?
There are 13 cities: San Francisco, Chicago, New York, Seattle, Tokyo, Osaka, London, Paris, Berlin, Amsterdam, Rome, Sydney and Madrid. Madrid was the latest, added in version 14.0 (Side Labs). There are also two resorts, the French Riviera and Jackson Hole, plus the seven plantation origins.
Is Coffee Inc 2+ on Apple Arcade different?
No. Side Labs says both versions have the same game content. The Arcade edition has no ads or in-app purchases and every feature unlocked from the start.
Sources: Coffee Inc 2 on the App Store (version history), Side Labs, Side Labs blog posts on plantations and blends, airports and the tutorial, LevelWinner, messos on Zenn.
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Featured image: AI-generated illustration
