☕ The Coffee–Fried Chicken Index 🐔

The Coffee–Fried Chicken Index is an informal property metric for spotting “up and coming” neighbourhoods in London, popularised by flat-hunter Sam Floy. The observation is simple: a high density of artisanal coffee shops alongside a low density of fried-chicken takeaways tends to mark an area in the middle of gentrification. Coffee shops arrive with, and cater to, an incoming demographic with disposable income; chicken shops are the incumbent high-street economy. Where the ratio tips, prices have often already started to follow.

The layers, and what each one is for:

• The Index — the headline coffee-versus-chicken score.
• Price Growth — how house prices have actually moved.
• Value Spots — where it gets interesting: areas where the index and the price data diverge, i.e. places that look gentrifying on the ground but haven't repriced yet.
• Coffee Density and Chicken Density — the two raw ingredients, so you can see what's driving a score.
• London Banana — a hand-drawn crescent, London only.

There's also a “Check my area” lookup for your own postcode, and a city switcher for London, Manchester and Liverpool.

Sources. Shops Overture Maps, prices HM Land Registry 2011–now. See also Glaeser 2018, Maguire 2015. Correlation, not causation.