Cafes in Birmingham

Birmingham has 742 cafes competing for customers across the city — and that figure doesn't account for the 1,813 fast food outlets and 1,003 restaurants also vying for the same dining spend. The cafe sector is the third-largest food and drink category in the city, behind fast food and restaurants but well ahead of bars (171) and pubs (812).

The market is dominated by coffee shops, which make up 226 of those 742 cafes — roughly 30%. After that, the picture fragments quickly. 'Local' style cafes account for 18, sandwich shops for 14, bubble tea venues for 13, cake-focused spots for 11, and breakfast cafes for just 8. There are 38 distinct cuisine types across the sector, suggesting a market with genuine variety but heavy concentration at the coffee shop end.

The most striking data point: only 135 of Birmingham's 742 cafes — just 18% — have a website. That leaves 607 cafes with no web presence at all, at a time when the majority of customers start their search for somewhere to eat or drink online. For any café owner willing to invest in even a basic website, the bar for online visibility is remarkably low.

Competition is intense in raw numbers. 742 cafes in a city of 1.15 million people is a dense market. But with so few operators investing in their digital presence, there's a clear gap between the number of competitors and the number who are actually findable when a potential customer searches online.