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 per cent a year since 2007, and could rise another 75 per cent to Rmb16bn ($2.5bn) by 2017, according to research group Mintel.
It must be the marketing coup of all time: the transformation of China from a tea leaf nation to a country of coffee drinkers – in spite of the fact that most Chinese still abhor the taste of the bitter brew.
Western coffeehouse chains are stumbling over each other to open up in China, and Starbucks– which has a shop on every major street in China’s biggest cities – expects the mainland to be its second-largest global market by 2014.