San Diego is the No. 9 Best City for Chocolate Lovers
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Where are the best cities to give in to your chocolate cravings?
Lawn Love ranked 190 of the biggest U.S. cities to determine the Best Cities for Chocolate Lovers.
They looked for cities with abundant chocolate factories and high-quality shops selling chocolate, including chocolatiers, dessert shops, and patisseries. They also considered chocolate-themed entertainment like museums, tours, theme parks, and events.
Melt into International Chocolate Day on Sept. 13 with the city rankings and analysis below.
The meltdown: Key insights
Big-city bonbons
Large cities offer plenty of spots for residents (and tourists alike) to find quality sweets.
New York takes the crown of the chocolate empire at No. 1 overall and in the Access category. The city is swimming in chocolate delicacies, being home to over 100 chocolate shops and the most chocolate manufacturers in the country. NYC also has hundreds more coffee shops and bakeries than any other city, so you don’t need to walk far for a chocolatey surprise.
Las Vegas, at No. 3, is its own Chocolate Sin City, far outnumbering the competition in dessert shops, candy shops, and ice cream shops. Chicago (No. 7) follows closely behind, with the second-highest number of chocolate stores and bakeries.
Meanwhile, smaller cities like Sioux Falls, South Dakota (No. 190), Columbus, Georgia (No. 189), and Mesquite, Texas (No. 188) gave a bittersweet performance overall, with scarce options for their small-town chocolate lovers.
Willy Wonka’s West
While California is better known for its health-food trends, the Golden State has a golden ticket in Access to delicious chocolate.
Indulgent San Francisco (No. 2) is home to industry icon Ghirardelli, in addition to a number of smaller artisans and manufacturers. Head down the coast to SoCal cities Los Angeles (No. 5) and San Diego (No. 9), where you’ll find plenty of patisseries, candy stores, and dessert shops to satisfy your cocoa-flavored cravings.
On the northern end of the West Coast, cities like Seattle (No. 6) and Portland (No. 14) also impress with many high-quality chocolate shops and bakeries, coffee shops, and dessert shops.
Charming confections
Can’t talk about the Best Cities for Chocolate Lovers without mentioning The Sweetest Place on Earth: Hershey, Pennsylvania (No. 4).
Founded by the nation’s most familiar chocolate company, Hershey’s, this town is best known for its chocolatey genesis. Hershey might not have a variety of tasty chocolate shops to choose from, but it’s the perfect place to go if you’re looking for the ultimate chocolate-based entertainment.
If you’re just searching for a good bite of chocolate, you might unexpectedly find it in small cities, such as Des Moines, Iowa (No. 19), Pomona, California (No. 26), and Garden Grove, California (No. 16). Des Moines earns the No. 1 spot in Establishment Quality, with the two Cali suburbs falling closely behind.
Behind the ranking
For each of the 200 biggest U.S. cities, Lawn Love gathered publicly available data on the factors listed in the table below. They replaced the smallest city in sample with Hershey, Pennsylvania, considering it is a popular tourist destination for chocolate lovers.
Lawn Love then grouped the factors into three categories: Access, Establishment Quality, and Entertainment.
Next, They calculated weighted scores for each city in each category.
Finally, Lawn Love averaged the scores for each metro across all categories. They eliminated 10 cities lacking sufficient data in a single category, resulting in a total sample size of 190 cities.
The city that earned the highest average score was ranked “Best” (No. 1), while the city with the lowest was ranked “Worst” (No. 190). (Note: The “Worst” among individual factors may not be No. 190 due to ties.)
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