According to the Korea Customs Service (KCS), the South Korea’s coffee market has more than tripled in value over the last ten years.
This translates into 26.5 billion cups of coffee being served last year and an average of 512 cups being consumed per person.
Broken down, coffee mixes ranked No. 1, accounting for well over 13 billion cups, followed by fresh roasted coffee making up 4.8 billion cups, with the remainder being canned coffee and various coffee-flavored drinks.
The latest data showed that while people drank more, the price of a cup of coffee has also shot up in the past 10 years, with more people drinking expensive brews than before.
The average price for a cup of fresh roasted coffee stood at 1,636 won, with this market reaching 7.85 trillion won market last year, while in 2007, it stood at just 900 billion won.
In the past, Korea’s domestic market was dominated by coffee mixes and instant coffee, but this changed with the opening of Starbucks and Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf stores in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
Besides the growth of big coffee chains, local trends are leading to more stores operating their own roasting machines and becoming more high-end to meet consumers’ diversified demands.
