This photo, taken on Feb. 25, 2020, shows a customer sipping coffee at a cafe in Seoul. (Yonhap)
SEOUL, Feb. 5 (Korea Bizwire) — Starbucks Korea presented ‘HOPE’ as this year’s major coffee trend on the basis of big data it collected from the stores it operates across the country.
HOPE refers to four major coffee trends: ‘Home,’ non-face-to-face ‘Order & Pay,’ ‘Personalized’ and ‘Emotional Well-being.’
The local unit of the U.S. coffee giant predicted that the popularity of home café, in which people try to enjoy café-like drinks at home, would continue this year. The company’s coffee bean sales grew by 62 percent in December 2020.
As people’s interest in non-face-to-face consumption culture grows, the number of mobile order transactions averaged 170,000 cases per day last year, accounting for about one fourth of Starbucks Korea’s total order transactions.
Starbucks Korea also predicted that the number of clients looking for customized drinks would increase this year.
The number of Starbucks customers who opted to change coffee beans for their own tastes increased by about 30 percent last year compared to a year ago.
Another attention-garnering trend is the rising popularity of non-coffee drinks. In last year’s overall beverage sales ranking, ‘Grapefruit Honey Black Tea’ ranked fourth, while sales of ‘Mint Blend Tea’ also jumped by 26 percent year on year.
Ashley Song (ashley@koreabizwire.com)
