STiR coffee and tea magazine

42 STiR coffee and tea / Issue 5, 2020 (October / November) By Joel Petersson Ivre A Coffee, Corona, and Korea t Café Fred & Sally in Seoul's Seokyodong neighborhood, the scent of choco- late cake and medium roast is so thick that at first, the jazz music that playing from hidden speakers is barely noticeable. The crowd, however, is thinner. After months of sporadic yet manageable small-scale outbreaks, South Korea is experiencing a second peak in coronavirus infections. Fred & Sally's resident barista, Lee Dahye, explains that at this time in the afternoon, workers from the surrounding offices usually gather for a quick afternoon cup of coffee, but the coronavirus has reduced customers to a trickle. The rest of Seoul's 42,600 coffeeshops are similarly empty. With the worst yet to come for South Korea, a coffee market valued to 6.8 trillion won (US$5.8bn) in 2018 — and once expected to hit 8.6 trillion in 2023 — is being put through the grinder. Making things worse, cafés have become a hotspot for virus spread. Although visi- tors are noticeably fewer, the air-conditioned spaces become an ideal vector for the airborne virus. Korean newswire service Yonhap even ran headlines like "S. Koreans' coffee craze turns out to be hurdle in virus fight." At the end of August, the local government in Seoul forbade large franchised cof- fee chains like Starbucks, and local competitors like Ediya Coffee and Holly's Coffee, from offering in-store seating. Under so-called "level 2.5 measures," these stores may only provide take-out or delivery. So far, non-franchised coffeeshops have— merci- fully — been spared such measures, but an extended period on semi-lockdown would no doubt affect small independent coffee shops as well. An empty cafe in Seoul due to Covid-19.

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