Coffee Chains Brew Big Growth in China.docVIP

Coffee Chains Brew Big Growth in China Chinese seem to have ac- quired the taste for coffee. Coffee in China used to be tarred with the same brush as capitalism. But as capitalism has caught on in China， so has coffee. The mainland market for retail packaged coffee has grown at a compound rate of 18% a year since 2007， and could rise another 75% to 16 billion yuan （$2.5 billion） by the year of 2017， according to research group Mintel. It must be the marketing coup of all time： the transformation of China from a tea nation to a country of coffee drinkers， in spite of the fact that many Chinese still distaste the taste of the bitter brew. Western coffeehouse chains are stumbling over each other to open up in China. Starbucks， which has a shop on every major street in China’s biggest cities， has made the mainland China its largest global market outside North America. Nestlé， the food group， already sells two out of three cups of soluble coffee on the mainland. Nestlé China’s food and beverage sales have risen by a 16% compound annual growth rate since 2008， and coffee sales have grown faster than that. With China’s per capita coffee consumption only four cups per year compared with 400 in Japan， the potential is obvious. Contrary to what you might expect， the biggest instant coffee cultures in the world are all tea cultures， like Japan and the UK. Meanwhile， Chinese farmers have gained taste for coffee too. The country is emerging as a key Asian producer of a different beverage： quality arabica coffee. An increasing number of Yunnan farmers are turning to coffee， which offers higher returns compared with other crops. In 2012， farmers’ income from coffee was double that for tea grown on the same acreage. Nestléstarted operations in Yunnan in the late 1980s， offering training and purchasing coffee from growers. Since 2005， the number of its suppliers has grown from 147 to more than 2000. Coffee with Chinese Characteristic Analysts say that coffee is an alien taste for th