Hot Beverage Emoji
U+2615:coffee:About Hot Beverage ☕️
Hot Beverage () is part of the Food & Drink group in Unicode. Added in Unicode E0.6. Type on GitHub and Slack to use it. Click copy above to grab it, paste it anywhere.
Works in iMessage, WhatsApp, Discord, Slack, Instagram, Twitter, Gmail, and every app that supports Unicode.
Often associated with beverage, cafe, caffeine, and 7 more keywords.
Meaning varies across cultures, see cultural notes below.
Scroll down for the full story: meaning, trends, combos, and more.
How it looks
What does it mean?
A steaming cup of coffee or tea. ☕ is one of the oldest emoji symbols in Unicode — part of Unicode 4.0 in 2003 as HOT BEVERAGE, predating the iPhone, Instagram, and the entire modern emoji standard.
Two meanings live side by side. The literal one is unchanged: coffee, tea, or any hot drink. 'Morning ☕', 'coffee first ☕', 'tea time ☕.' The slang one has almost overtaken it among younger users: ☕ means gossip. 'Spill the tea ☕' means 'share the gossip'; 🐸☕ is Kermit sipping tea — minding his own business while clearly judging yours.
The gossip meaning emerged from Black and LGBTQ+ drag/ballroom culture before going mainstream around 2014-15. The 2014 Lipton Kermit tea commercial gave the meaning its face, and @thatsnoneofmybusinesstho gained 130,000 Instagram followers in four days that June.
Outside slang, the emoji is hitched to a $245+ billion global coffee industry and a $220+ billion coffee-shop market. Starbucks alone operates over 40,000 stores.
☕ is doing three separate jobs simultaneously. Context tells you which one is active.
Literal coffee/tea. 'Can't function without ☕', 'third cup of the day ☕', 'morning routine' posts. Dominates Instagram stories in the 6am–10am window globally. The most universally readable drink emoji in the set.
Gossip / 'tea.' 'Spill it ☕' or 🐸☕ ('that's none of my business'). Peaked around 2017-20 but remains widely understood. If someone unexpectedly drops ☕ into a conversation about another person, the slang reading is probably active.
Coffee-date invite. 'Coffee? ☕' is one of the lowest-pressure date invites in English. Below 🍸 and 🍷 on the flirt scale, above ☕ with nothing else. The emoji doesn't necessarily mean romance — workplaces use it the same way for 'chat offline.'
Platform patterns: Morning Instagram stories are ☕'s native habitat. TikTok uses it heavily in work-from-home and 'day in my life' content. X splits ☕ between earnest coffee-lover content and ironic 🐸☕ shade. LinkedIn uses it for 'virtual coffee chat' requests, a whole professional networking subgenre.
The emoji rarely shows up in alcoholic-drink contexts — it's one of the few drink emojis that reads sober-curious by default. 49% of Americans actively trying to drink less alcohol in 2025 has driven ☕ into even more celebration-adjacent contexts previously claimed by 🍾 and 🥂.
Gossip. 'Spill the tea ☕' means 'share the gossip.' 'Sipping tea ☕' means watching drama without commenting. The slang came from Black and LGBTQ+ drag and ballroom culture — 'T' meant truth; 'tea' became the juicy version. Popularized by the 2014 Kermit Lipton commercial.
'But that's none of my business.' Kermit the Frog sipping tea while silently judging. The image-macro meme became viral in June 2014 when @thatsnoneofmybusinesstho gained 130,000 Instagram followers in four days. It means throwing shade while pretending to stay out of it.
The non-alcoholic drink emojis
What it means from...
The 'grab coffee?' text is the softest first-date invite in the English-speaking world. Low pressure, short commitment, daytime energy. ☕ from a crush can also just mean 'thinking of you while I drink this' — less pointed than 🍷.
Morning ritual code. 'Made coffee ☕' is relationship shorthand for care. Partners also use it as 'let's have a real conversation over coffee' when something serious needs discussing.
The universal 'catch up' invitation. 'Coffee this weekend ☕?' requires no context. Also 'spill it ☕' when you want their gossip — dual meaning, usually obvious from context.
Crosses generations. Older family members use ☕ literally ('having my morning coffee'); younger ones use it for both literal drinks and 'come over to talk about something.' Sunday-brunch energy.
'Virtual coffee' is a post-pandemic networking genre. 'Got 30 min for coffee this week?' on LinkedIn or Slack is now the standard way to ask for a 1:1. Also doubles as 'I need to tell you something about this project' in team chats.
Only in specific framing. 'Coffee? ☕' as a date invite is the lowest-pressure romantic suggestion in English. Outside that framing, ☕ is not inherently flirty — it's mostly coffee, tea, or gossip. Context does all the work.
Emoji combos
Non-alcoholic drink emojis on Google Trends (normalized, 2020-2025)
Origin story
☕ is an emoji elder. It shipped in Unicode 4.0 in April 2003 as HOT BEVERAGE — the same release that added symbols like ⌗ NUMBER SIGN and ⏏ EJECT SYMBOL. It predates the iPhone (2007) by four years, Emoji 1.0 (2015) by twelve years, and most social media platforms by a decade. The original Unicode entry treated it as a functional symbol, not an emoji — it didn't get its colorful emoji presentation until Unicode 6.0 in 2010.
The generic 'hot beverage' naming was deliberate. Unicode avoided specifying coffee or tea so the emoji could serve every culture's warm drink, and every platform's visual rendering honors that ambiguity. In most vendors' designs, the brown liquid and mug shape could be either — Western coffee culture and English tea culture both claim it.
The gossip slang is newer and more traceable. The 'spill the tea' phrase originated in Black and LGBTQ+ drag/ballroom culture — 'T' (truth) evolved into 'tea' (the real truth / the gossip). The cultural crossover moment is pinned to 2014: Lipton's 'Be More Tea' Kermit commercial aired, and within six months the image-macro version of Kermit sipping tea with 'but that's none of my business' went viral. The @thatsnoneofmybusinesstho Instagram account gained 130,000 followers in four days in June 2014.
The emoji absorbed that slang almost instantly. By 2016-17, ☕ alone could signal gossip without Kermit; by 2020 the 'tea' meaning was mainstream enough to confuse older users who still read it literally.
Design history
- 2003Approved in Unicode 4.0 as U+2615 HOT BEVERAGE (April)↗
- 2010Gains colorful emoji presentation in Unicode 6.0 as part of the mass emoji standardization
- 2013[Turkish coffee culture and tradition](https://ich.unesco.org/en/RL/turkish-coffee-culture-and-tradition-00645) inscribed on UNESCO's Intangible Cultural Heritage list (#00645) at the 8.COM session
- 2015[Arabic coffee, a symbol of generosity](https://ich.unesco.org/en/RL/arabic-coffee-a-symbol-of-generosity-02111) inscribed by Saudi Arabia, UAE, Oman and Qatar (#02111). Two formally protected coffee rituals now sit behind the same emoji
- 2014[Lipton's Kermit tea commercial](https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/kermit-sipping-tea-but-thats-none-of-my-business) and @thatsnoneofmybusinesstho Instagram account turn ☕ into gossip shorthand globally within months
- 2015Emoji 1.0 ships; ☕ becomes one of the most-used emojis worldwide
- 2020Pandemic work-from-home culture makes ☕ the de facto 'virtual coffee chat' emoji; LinkedIn adoption explodes
- 2021Unicode 14.0 adds 🫖 teapot. ☕ no longer has to carry all hot-drink meaning alone, but dominance remains
- 2022[Italy's UNESCO commission rejects the espresso bid](https://www.comunicaffe.com/italian-commission-rejects-candidacy-of-espresso-to-unesco-heritage-list/) after Naples and the national Consortium file conflicting applications. Opera goes forward as Italy's 2023 candidate instead
- 2023Espresso Martini's TikTok moment briefly blurs the line between ☕ and 🍸 in cocktail content↗
- 2025[Sober-curious movement hits 49% participation](https://www.craftbrewingbusiness.com/business-marketing/sober-curious-movement-grows-49-of-americans-plan-to-drink-less-in-2025-says-ncsolutions-survey/); ☕ absorbs celebration contexts previously claimed by 🥂 and 🍾 in wellness-coded content
Around the world
Finland / Nordic countries
Finland tops global per-capita coffee consumption at roughly 12 kg per person per year (3.77 cups daily). 'Kahvitauko' (coffee break) is a legally protected workplace ritual in Finland. ☕ reads as structural infrastructure more than a drink.
Turkey / Middle East
Offering coffee is a formal social ritual. Turkish coffee culture and tradition was inscribed on UNESCO's Representative List of Intangible Cultural Heritage in 2013 (inscription #00645). Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Oman, and Qatar followed in 2015 with Arabic coffee, a symbol of generosity (#02111). ☕ on a Turkish or Gulf-region post carries the weight of two formally protected hospitality rituals, not just a drink.
Italy
Espresso is a 10-second standing-at-the-bar event, often multiple times per day. Italians average ~5-6kg per capita but frequency is extremely high. ☕ doesn't translate as well to espresso culture because the rendering usually shows a larger mug. Italy's own UNESCO commission rejected the 2022 espresso bid after Naples and the national Consortium filed competing applications, so the country with the most rigid coffee ritual on Earth still has zero inscribed coffee heritage. Opera went forward instead.
United Kingdom
Tea-first country (though coffee gained ground post-2010). 'A cuppa' is an identity and a social glue. ☕ is used, but 🍵 and 🫖 occasionally fit better for British tea content.
United States
Starbucks' home market. The coffee-shop market was $220 billion in 2024; Starbucks alone operates over 16,000 US stores. ☕ is culturally coffee-first and reads as daytime productivity.
Japan / Korea
Sophisticated café culture (the Japanese kissaten and Korean cafe-hopping scenes). ☕ reads literal and polite. For traditional tea ceremony or matcha content, 🍵 fits better.
Global Anglophone slang
☕ as gossip ('spill the tea') is widely understood across English-speaking internet. In non-English-speaking contexts, the gossip meaning usually doesn't travel — users there read ☕ literally.
Finland, by any measure. Finns drink about 12 kg of coffee per person per year — the world's highest per-capita consumption, with coffee breaks ('kahvitauko') as legally-protected workplace rituals. Most of the Nordic countries are in the global top 10.
Coffee consumption per capita (2024)
Coffee rituals UNESCO formally protects
Often confused with
🍵 is a teacup without a handle — specifically Japanese green tea, often matcha. ☕ is a Western-style mug with handle, readable as coffee or black/English tea. 🍵 is matcha; ☕ is Starbucks.
🍵 is a teacup without a handle — specifically Japanese green tea, often matcha. ☕ is a Western-style mug with handle, readable as coffee or black/English tea. 🍵 is matcha; ☕ is Starbucks.
🫖 is a teapot (added in 2020). ☕ is a single cup. Use 🫖 for tea-making / afternoon tea content; ☕ for single-serving or general hot drink.
🫖 is a teapot (added in 2020). ☕ is a single cup. Use 🫖 for tea-making / afternoon tea content; ☕ for single-serving or general hot drink.
🧋 is bubble tea (boba) — specifically Taiwanese iced tea with tapioca pearls. ☕ is hot. Different drink category entirely; bubble tea doesn't read as 'hot drink / gossip / coffee date.'
🧋 is bubble tea (boba) — specifically Taiwanese iced tea with tapioca pearls. ☕ is hot. Different drink category entirely; bubble tea doesn't read as 'hot drink / gossip / coffee date.'
🥤 is a cold drink in a paper cup (soda, smoothie). ☕ is hot. The visible steam on ☕ is doing semantic work — it's specifically hot-beverage coded.
🥤 is a cold drink in a paper cup (soda, smoothie). ☕ is hot. The visible steam on ☕ is doing semantic work — it's specifically hot-beverage coded.
☕ is a Western-style mug with a handle — reads as coffee or black tea. 🍵 is a handleless teacup — specifically Japanese green tea, often matcha. Use ☕ for coffee and general 'hot drink'; use 🍵 for matcha, Japanese tea culture, or East Asian tea content.
Vessel positioning: where ☕ sits among drink emojis
Caption ideas
Aesthetic sets
Starbucks stores worldwide
Fun facts
- •☕ has been in Unicode since April 2003 — four years before the iPhone, 12 years before Emoji 1.0. It's one of the oldest emoji symbols on your keyboard.
- •Finland is the world's #1 coffee-drinking country per capita: roughly 12 kg per person per year, or about 3.77 cups daily. Coffee breaks ('kahvitauko') are legally protected workplace rituals.
- •Starbucks operates 40,199 stores globally as of 2025 — 16,864 in the US, 8,011 in China, and ~2,077 each in Japan and South Korea. The company aims for 55,000 stores by 2030.
- •The global coffee market was $245.2 billion in 2024, projected to hit $381 billion by 2034 at 4.52% CAGR. The coffee-shop segment alone was $220 billion in 2024.
- •The 'spill the tea' slang meaning came from Black and LGBTQ+ drag/ballroom culture, where 'T' meant truth. ☕ absorbed the meaning after the 2014 Kermit Lipton commercial.
- •@thatsnoneofmybusinesstho, an Instagram account dedicated to Kermit-sipping-tea memes, gained 130,000 followers in four days when it launched in June 2014. It's still one of the fastest emoji-adjacent meme launches ever tracked.
- •☕ is the official emoji of the Java programming language), named after coffee. James Gosling's team at Sun Microsystems originally called it Oak (after a tree outside his office), then Green, then settled on Java in a January 1995 brainstorm. Other shortlist names: Silk, Lyric, Pepper, NetProse, Neon. Most of those would have made for very different emojis.
- •Turkish coffee has UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage status. The hospitality ritual around it is considered a protected cultural practice. ☕ on a Turkish post reads with more ritual weight than on an American one.
- •49% of Americans said they were trying to drink less alcohol in 2025, driving a measurable shift toward ☕ replacing 🥂 and 🍾 in 'good news' content across wellness and lifestyle feeds.
- •Coffee is technically the world's second-most-traded commodity by value, after crude oil. That trillion-dollar supply chain gets compressed into a single steaming-mug emoji.
- •Starbucks' first holiday cup debuted in 1997 in jewel tones (magenta, sapphire, emerald, purple) with holly leaves made of coffee beans. The candy-apple red version that defines the season now didn't appear until 1999. The 2015 plain-red minimalist redesign kicked off the 'war on Christmas' cup controversy that briefly turned ☕ into a culture-war symbol.
- •Ethiopia is the biological birthplace of arabica and the cultural birthplace of the coffee ceremony, but it's still campaigning for UNESCO recognition of the buna ceremony. The 9th-century Kaldi-and-the-dancing-goats origin story is well attested in oral tradition; the bid would make it three protected coffee heritages on the same emoji.
In pop culture
- •Friends Central Perk: the iconic coffeehouse set from 1994-2004 essentially defined Western café culture on television. ☕ inherits decades of 'hangout at the coffee shop' semantics from the show.
- •Starbucks: 40,000+ stores globally as of 2025. The brand turned coffee into a personality, and ☕ carries that Starbucks-shaped cultural weight whether users realize it or not.
- •Kermit sipping tea meme (2014): gave ☕ its face in the gossip context. Still one of the most-recognized emoji combos in internet culture.
- •Gilmore Girls (2000-07): Lorelai and Rory's coffee obsession became a whole fan-content subgenre. ☕ shows up in every Gilmore Girls tribute TikTok.
- •The Java programming language: ☕ is the official symbol of Java), which is named after coffee. Programmer Slack channels use ☕ for Java-specific conversations.
Trivia
For developers
- •☕ is with optional variation selector. Common shortcodes: (Slack, Discord, GitHub).
- •Emoji presentation is handled by the Variation Selector-16 (). Without it, some systems render as monochrome text. Use to force colorful emoji rendering.
- •Also the official symbol of the Java programming language). Used as a conventional marker in developer chat for Java-specific discussion.
It was approved in Unicode 4.0 in April 2003 — four years before the first iPhone, twelve years before Emoji 1.0. It's one of the oldest emoji characters in the set, originally treated as a functional symbol before gaining full emoji styling in Unicode 6.0 (2010).
The Java language) is named after coffee — specifically Java coffee, which programmers drank during development. The mug became the official Java mascot/logo. Developer communities use ☕ to flag Java-related conversation.
See the full Emoji Developer Tools guide for regex patterns, encoding helpers, and more.
What does ☕ mean to you first?
Select all that apply
- Hot Beverage — Emojipedia (emojipedia.org)
- U+2615 Hot Beverage — Codepoints (codepoints.net)
- Hot Beverage — Dictionary.com (dictionary.com)
- Kermit Sipping Tea — Know Your Meme (knowyourmeme.com)
- Coffee Market Report — Precedence Research (precedenceresearch.com)
- Starbucks Statistics 2024 — Grabon (grabon.com)
- Coffee Shop Market — Maximize Market Research (maximizemarketresearch.com)
- Coffee Consumption by Country — World Population Review (worldpopulationreview.com)
- Java programming language — Wikipedia (wikipedia.org)
- Sober-curious movement 2025 — Craft Brewing Business (craftbrewingbusiness.com)
- Turkish coffee culture and tradition: UNESCO ICH (#00645) (ich.unesco.org)
- Arabic coffee, a symbol of generosity: UNESCO ICH (#02111) (ich.unesco.org)
- Italian commission rejects espresso UNESCO bid: Comunicaffe (comunicaffe.com)
- 20 years of Starbucks holiday cups: Starbucks Stories (stories.starbucks.com)
- So why did they decide to call it Java?: InfoWorld (infoworld.com)
- Ethiopia seeks UNESCO ICH status for the coffee ceremony: Sprudge (sprudge.com)
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