Coffee’s journey through history is as rich and complex as its flavour. By the 17th century, coffee houses had spread across Europe, serving as hubs for commerce, politics, and debate.

Although I don't drink coffee myself, I found it very interesting to analyse people's habits, discover insights about coffee drinkers and sales statistics, and study order types.

Lucky for us, a dataset from a coffee sale shop was available for exploration on kaggle.com.  It contains information about the purchase date, payment method, total amount spent and type of drinks purchased from March 2024 to March 2025. So let's start working on it right away!

Decoding Transactions: Card vs. Cash in Consumer Behaviour

As you know, customers can choose how to pay: Cash or card? So I checked the numbers to try and find the answer!

The overwhelming dominance of card payments signals a significant consumer shift towards digital, contactless and mobile-friendly transactions. The decline of cash usage is driven by convenience, speed and hygiene, especially in a post-pandemic world.

We can take away the following from this indicator. The statistic suggests that the coffee shop should prioritise card transactions.

Understanding Drink Preferences in the Coffee Shop

Now that we have analysed our customers' payment preferences, let's have a closer look at the coffee shop's order history.

After removing duplicate entries, our dataset comprises 44 drinks that have been purchased at least once. These include options such as latte, hot chocolate, cappuccino and espresso.

Due to the wide variety of drinks and to improve the visual clarity of the data, I have chosen to extract only the top 10 drinks that have received the most positive customer feedback. This will make it much easier to gather relevant insights.

And the winner is... Americano with milk! As you can see, this is the drink favoured by customers, performing slightly better than the Latte.

Another insight is provided by the graph of the data values: American coffee, without milk, takes third position in the ranking! I wonder what the score would be if we combined both Americano drinks and compared them to the rest.

More than half of the orders are for Americano drinks. We could suggest to the coffee shop owner that they continue to serve Americano drinks. It's by far the most popular drink among customers.

The Coffee Clock: When Do consumers Drink the Most?

We've analysed the customers' payment preferences, so let's have a look at the order history at the coffee shop over the months from March 2024 to March 2025.

Orders rise steadily throughout spring and summer, peaking sharply in October 2024 and February 2025, with both peaks exceeding 420 orders. This suggests higher consumption in the colder months.

A noticeable dip appears in January 2025, likely due to post-holiday habits. From May to September 2024, orders remain fairly stable, reflecting consistent demand. Overall, the data indicates seasonal patterns, possibly influenced by weather or marketing campaigns.

In conclusion, after analysing coffee sales, we can confirm that the Americano is consumers' favourite drink, whether with milk or not. The owner should increase supplies to meet the regular demand. This is especially important during periods of high consumption due to colder weather.