Credit: Liv Averett / Amazon / Instacart / Sprouts / Walmart
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Contrary to popular boomer belief, making coffee at home won’t suddenly make you a millionaire—but it will save you money in the long run. And hey, if you’re buying the best coffee at the grocery store, then it’s not a huge sacrifice to forgo a daily $6 latte.
Basically, if you want to make the best coffee at home—whether you’re trying to save cash or you just like being in control of your own coffee—we can help. Over the course of multiple taste tests, we’ve set out to find all the best grocery store coffee—the best instant coffee, the best canned lattes, the best bottled cold brew, and more. There’s a lot of ground we haven’t covered (or I should say grounds we haven’t covered—get it?), but for now, here’s all the best store bought coffee we’ve found so far.
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- Chamberlain Coffee Salted Caramel Latte with Oatmilk
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In addition to being a model and influencer, Emma Chamberlain is a coffee entrepreneur. We taste tested her entire line, and this canned caramel latte was the best coffee of the bunch. It’s sweet and creamy but the caramel flavor doesn’t overtake the flavor of the coffee itself. It strikes a nice balance. And we know it’s beside the point, but the packaging sure is cute, too.
Read the full ranking of the best Chamberlain Coffee
Credit: Merc / Walmart
- Organic Fair Trade Wake Up Blend Ground Coffee
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When we taste tested all the coffee from Trader Joe’s, we focused our attention on their canisters of pre-ground coffee so as not to die from a caffeine overdose. We’ll put their whole beans to the test in a future taste test, but for the time being, their Organic Fair Trade Wake Up Blend is the best coffee to buy if Trader Joe’s is your grocery destination of choice. A lot of the Trader Joe’s coffee we tasted was pretty acidic, but this one is rich and fruity rather than aggressively astringent. It goes down nice and smooth, and that’s about all we want from the best grocery store coffee—even the best cheap grocery store coffee.
Read the full ranking of the best Trader Joe’s coffee
Credit: Liv Averett
- Great Value 100% Arabica Colombian Ground Coffee
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Walmart’s Great Value brand sells a vast array of coffee pods for the ol’ Keurig—there are creamy ones and flavored ones, but the best overall was a standard Colombian K Cup. We have a Keurig at the office and I’ve used it to brew plenty of pricey, name brand K Cup pods, and I swear these grocery store brand coffee pods make a better cup of coffee. Of all the Great Value coffee we brewed, this medium-dark brew is the one I’d be happy to drink black (although, I wouldn’t turn up my nose at some of the best coffee creamer to go with it).
Read the full ranking of the best Walmart coffee pods
Credit: Merc / Walmart
- Twin Peaks Original Pour Over 100% Colombian Coffee
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When we recently updated our ranking of the best instant coffee, we looked beyond those sad freeze-dried crystals you stir into hot water and expanded our search to include pour-over pouches. What a game changer! Twin Peaks Colombian coffee may not be the best grocery store coffee (we had to seek it out online), but it’s so much more robust than the crystals you’ve been buying. It has a silky mouthfeel, a roasty aroma, and a toasty flavor to match. Sure, it’s technically brewed rather than truly instant coffee, but it’s ready in a jiff and these neat little sachets would be super easy to bring camping. (In my mind, camping is the primary instant coffee use case.)
Read the full ranking of the best instant coffee
Credit: Liv Averett / Amazon
- La Colombe Triple Latte
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A lot of canned lattes are basically just cans of milk with a little splash of coffee in the mix. I tried a lot of these things and couldn’t believe how few of them actually embody the toasty richness of an actual latte—do better, brands! That said, the best coffee from our canned latte taste test was this La Colombe Triple Latte. It smells like coffee and it actually tastes like coffee with a creamy kick. If you’re consistently running late in the mornings but require coffee to achieve consciousness, a four pack of these puppies is a great gift to buy yourself.
Read the full ranking of the best canned lattes
Credit: Merc / La Colombe
Best Cold Brew Concentrate
- Stumptown Coffee Roasters Cold Brew Concentrate
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Portland, Oregon-based Stumptown makes some of the best grocery store coffee. We love their cold brew (more on that in a sec), so it stands to reason that we’d also love their cold brew concentrate. Stumptown coffee has a really distinctive third-wave coffee shop sort of flavor—very roasty-toasty. And a great thing about the concentrate is that you can make your coffee as weak or as frighteningly strong as you want. The best coffee is customizable to your tastes.
Read the full ranking of the best cold brew concentrate
Credit: Liv Averett / Pavilions
- Stumptown Original Cold Brew Coffee
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We love Stok cold brew coffee, but it was bumped from the number one spot in our cold brew ranking by this Stumptown coffee. It really tastes like coffee that was brewed by a barista and it comes in a brown glass bottle so everyone will think you’re drinking a beer at 7:30 a.m. like a cool guy. It’s fresh and intense, and it’s some of the best store bought coffee if you can find it at your local grocery store.
Read the full ranking of the best bottled cold brew coffee
Credit: Liv Averett / Instacart
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About the Author
Howdy! I’m Gwynedd, Sporked’s managing editor. I live in Los Angeles and have access to the best tacos the U.S. has to offer—but I’m a sucker for a crunchy Old El Paso taco night every now and then. I’ve been at Sporked since 2022 and I’m still searching frozen mozzarella sticks that can hold a candle to restaurant sticks.
Why you should trust me: I’ve been a journalist for 20 years (yikes), a consumer of food for 40-plus years, and I’m truly hard pressed to think of foods I don’t like (or that I can’t tolerate at the very least). Oh and one time I cooked my way through Guy Fieri’s cookbook and wrote about the journey through Flavortown.
What I buy every week: Trader Joe’s Original Savory Thins. Fat free plain yogurt (usually Fage or Nancy’s). Honeycrisp apples. Sweet cream coffee creamer for my at-home Americanos. A frozen cauliflower crust pizza and some jarred mushrooms to top it with. Old El Paso Stand ‘N Stuff taco shells and Gardein Ground Be’f, even though I think “be’f” is a nightmarish contraction.
Favorite ranking: Stouffer’s frozen dinners. I don’t own a microwave (I get my cancers the old fashioned way!), so I love taste testing things that I don’t really buy to eat at home.
Least favorite ranking: Soy sauce. Don’t get me wrong, I love soy sauce—but consuming that much sodium in one sitting is probably illegal in some countries. Our frozen enchilada taste test was a close second; the smell of microwaved corn tortillas still haunts me.
Gwynedd Stuart
Justine Sterling
Jordan Myrick
Ariana Losch
Jessica Block
Why the cheap shot at Boomers? It has nothing to do with this subject, and nothing to do with any of your tedious post. I guess it just means you’re an a***ole who thinks they witty. Well, that’s half right.
Please do one on the ground coffee available. Folgers, eight o clock type brands. With coffee getting more expensive that taste test for what we can afford but not compromise on flavor would be great!!