STiR coffee and tea magazine

STiR coffee and tea 61 www.host.fieramilano.it/en Familiar tale, happy ending? Hope may be gleaned from the story of Japan's coffee market, which has settled into a more premium focused market after rocketing growth gave way to a steep drop. Japan's roast cof- fee market grew by an impressive 6.5% in 2014 and the instant market rose 2.8%. In 2019 both of those segments, while still growing, are hovering around the 1.8% mark and slowing. South Korea's coffee market may mature in a similar pat- tern, but there are upsides to the shift. As Japan's coffee market cooled and deflated, it also improved in terms of roast quality and innovation with Japan continuing to dominate coffee auc- tions across South and Central America. A pivot towards quality may be underway in Korea as well. "Korea's coffee industry will improve with better quality and better tasting coffee, similar to the case in Japan," Sujin Park of ED&F MAN Korea told STiR. "Of course, people are starting to brew at home, and there are more office espresso machines, but in my opinion, people stop visiting cafés when the taste isn't there and there's nothing special about the coffee," she said. As a result, a focus on quality has become ubiquitous across South Korea's coffee industry. Companies are moving away from 3-in-1 and other low-cost instant coffees at a rate of about 2% per year, according to Park. "And we're seeing movement from premium instant and premium RTD coffees. Cafés are doing more direct roasting as well, and large franchises are moving to single origin," in order to improve quality and keep customers coming, noted Park. Other cafés devote more shelf space to food to appeal to customers with a sweet tooth, hoping to draw crowds back with signature desserts. "Cafés that focused on specialty coffee are now becoming more popular with desserts," Kim of CozyVilla said, adding that "bakery-focused cafes" are one way South Korean cafés are re- sponding to the maturing industry, where a simple americano no longer impresses Korean coffee drinkers. "I think that there will be many cafés changing in the fu- ture," he told STiR. A rustic cafe in Seoul's traditional Bukchon neighborhood.

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