Forget the double espresso or cappuccino, a flat white coffee is now
considered the drink of choice for geeks and hipsters world-wide.And now for those tech-minded global nomads in search of the perfect velvety drink (and the key place to operate), there’s a new way to find the best coffee out there: the Flat White Index, measuring quality, availability, number of visitors to a shop, and its cost.
The Flat White Index is part of a wider piece of research by Savills SVS.LN -0.21% World Research—attached to Savills, the U.K.-based real-estate consultants—which ranks 12 “tech cities” across four continents, based on five key metrics: business environment, tech environment, quality of life (which is where the coffee comes in), talent pool and property costs.
“Flat White is an emerging, popular drink…. And it’s also a proxy for cafe culture,” explains Paul Tostevin, lead research analyst of the data for Savills.
Berlin takes the coffee top spot with the price of a flat white the equivalent of $3.36, followed by Dublin ($3.47) and New York ($4.00).
The index was configured by analyzing data available from Foursquare, the city guide app, and its mentions of coffee places and scores, and it was overlaid with the cost of a coffee and they also looked at the number of visitors to the cafes. “A cafe is another kind of informal meeting in the technology sector,” says Mr. Tostevin. This is why access to free Wi-Fi was also analyzed when ranking cities. Savills also looked at whether these places were attracting like-minded people.
The research also measured population growth, the ratio of millennials (those between the ages of 15 and 34) to boomers, and talent pool in all those cities. It found fast-growth cities offer technology firms “expanding local markets to operate in and a growing pool of talent to employ,” says Mr. Tostevin.
Austin came top with a population growth forecast of 21% over the next decade, followed by Tel Aviv (17%) and Mumbai (16%).
Separately, nearly all of the 12 cities surveyed appeared “more youthful” than the countries in which they are located: 50% more youthful in the case of Austin, and 20% for London. “With the exception of Hong Kong and Berlin, there are more millennials than boomers in each, too,” he says.
Cities with a large concentration of students also performed well in Savills’s talent-pool ranking, with Austin, London and Tel Aviv showcasing a “strong presence” of students in the technical and sciences fields, explains Mr. Tostevin. “Links with industry are important here, too, in the exchange of knowledge and ideas,” he says, highlighting Austin as a city with good communication between tech firms and universities.
The report also looked at property costs (both office and residential). Mumbai, Berlin and Seoul were the three most affordable places, while Hong Kong, London and Singapore were the most expensive. Still, says Mr. Tostevin, property costs aren’t high up on the agenda for startups. “For startups, property costs aren’t the highest factor….Once they’ve got a bit of capital it is about securing the right people in the right place. Costs [are] secondary because they want the people and they want people to be happy,” he says.
This isn’t the first ranking of tech cities. Earlier this year, NerdWallet, a personal-finance website, ranked the top tech cities in the U.S. with San Jose, Calif. taking the top spot, followed by Boulder, Colo., and San Francisco. Austin took eighth spot. The ranking was based on the impact of funding, tech innovation and startup activity. In 2012, Buck Consultants International ranked 31 European cities for tech: Paris took the top spot, followed by London and Oxford. It measured technology and know-how, talent, market size, connectivity and international business climate.
