STiR coffee and tea magazine

34 STiR coffee and tea / Issue 4, 2018 (August / September) T By Peter Keen he tea-dominated culture of Britain, marked by stability and standardized brands, is now among the most dynamic coffee markets in the world, driven by specialty brewing and growth in locations. Consumption of coffee has increased from 70 to 95 million cups per day since 2007 and outlets from 10,000 to 24,000. There is still plenty of room for growth. While 6% drink six or more cups per day, a third of consumers surveyed do not drink coffee at all. The average per capita consumption of two cups a day remains among the lowest in Europe. Consumption in Scandinavia and Benelux are twice greater. Britain ranks around 40th among nations. The US, despite its image and Starbucks, is also not a heavy coffee drinking nation, ranking around 21st at three cups daily. Given the surge in demand and outlets, if the UK were to just match US per capita coffee drinking, the market would grow by 50%. The UK market has expanded mainly through an emphasis on craft coffees and locating stores where shoppers concentrate: the High Street. That has been a key in the success of Costa, Caffèe Nero, and Pret a Manger, the sandwich chain that dominates lunch trade. The core offering has been lattes that are less milky and sharper than, say, the US The fast-emerging growth area is the "flat white," espresso-based, with a micro- foam of steamed milk forming a thin topping of small bubbles with a velvety finish. It has a higher proportion of coffee to milk than a latte. It's served in smaller cups. One of the most distinctive features of the drink is that designs can be drawn on the foam that retain their clarity and shape. Both Australian and New Zealand coffee shops claim to have originated the flat white in the mid-1980s. Starbucks was the first to offer it, but only in its London stores. Costa followed nationally, just a week later. It's a complex drink to make well. Many commentators see flat white, which is now about 10% of the sales of the leading chains, as "the poster child for the growth of specialty coffee…" "People now under- stand the difference between a really great coffee and a substandard one…" Just as coffee in the US has been driven by Starbucks, in the UK Costa is the emblematic leader. Both built critical mass by offering not just an attractive and dif- ferentiated product but a distinctly enticing experience. Howard Schulz, the retired executive chairman at Starbucks, has often stated that its success came from revivifying UK's Dynamic Coffee Market Coffee follows the crowd

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