Good Cup · 5 November 2026
Trust stars for service and atmosphere, and a specialty rating for the coffee. Stars measure how much people liked the visit; they do not ask who roasted the beans or who made the cup.
Use Google Maps to check opening hours, how busy a place is and whether people felt welcome. Use a specialty coffee rating to decide whether the coffee itself is worth the trip. The two answer different questions, and mixing them up is how you end up with a beautiful café and an ordinary cup.
A star rating is an average of everyone who left one. Most reviews describe the room, the staff, the price and the cake. A café with a friendly team and a good brunch can sit at 4.7 next to a café whose baristas compete internationally. The stars cannot tell them apart, because almost nobody reviews the extraction.
A specialty rating starts from evidence about the coffee. Good Cup looks at who is behind the bar and their championship results, the roasters a café pours and how we rate them, the coffees and origins on the menu, the brewing methods and the equipment. In our November 2026 data, 94 % of the cafés we rate Outstanding have a barista with a championship title on the team. A star rating has no field for that.
Stars are still useful. They catch the things a coffee rating does not: a rude welcome, a café that has quietly closed, hours that changed. Read the newest reviews for those.
On Good Cup you do not have to choose between the two. Every café page shows its level next to its opening hours and whether it is open now, and opens the route in Google Maps with one tap. On the map you can filter to cafés that are open now and see only the levels you want, so the best places nearby that are open right now are one view. We look at the latest reviews too, for what guests say about the coffee and the welcome.
The simple rule: start from the level, then check that the café is open and how to get there. On Good Cup both are on the same page.