Fresh Cup Magazine, providing specialty coffee and tea professionals with unique insight into the trends, ideas, products and people that shape their world.
Issue link: http://freshcup.epubxp.com/i/111007
O ne late afternoon in 2009, the madness began at Think Coffee���s Mercer Street location in New York City. With virtually no warning, several bizarrely dressed South Korean men entered with a camera crew following. In broken English, they did their best to order doctored-up lattes. They took a few sips, made some sour faces and then headed out the door, leaving baristas and regulars scratching their heads. The stunt was part of a popular South Korean TV show called ���Infinite Challenge,��� and once the episode aired, life on Mercer Street changed. Soon, buses full of South Korean tourists would stop at the shop and dozens of travelers would order the same drinks that were featured on television. Not long after, a Seoulbased company contacted Think���s management looking to license the brand back in Asia. After negotiations over coffee quality and training stipulations, Think Korea wasted little time making its debut in the South Korean capital. ���They took our plans, leased a space, and in two and a half weeks had a Think Coffee that looked like they had taken a picture of one of our stores and made a sculpture out of it,��� says Think���s director of coffee, Matt Fury, There are now three Think Korea locations, all of them featuring the third-wave, specialty feel of the New York store that captivated South Korean viewers. In many ways, Think Korea���s inception and growth encapsulate the recent explosion in caf�� culture as a whole in South Korea. Shiny chains, quirky independents, Cup of Excellence-minded microroasters and barista education have in the past decade gone from zero to ubiquitous in Seoul and much of the rest of the densely populated nation. According to a recent Reuters report, the number of coffee shops in South Korea increased tenfold from 2006 to 2011, and there are now more than 12,000 retail outlets in the country (a number on par with the shop count in the United Kingdom, which has 12 million more people than South Korea). However, the aspect of South Korea���s coffee and caf�� proliferation that is perhaps most noteworthy is the way the industry STEVEN KIL there views its business. Whereas the specialty coffee framework in the U.S. and Europe was laid by a handful of determined individuals wanting better flavor above all else, the heart of South Korea���s ascent has been market analysis and capitalizing on consumer trends (i.e., mimicking the coffee concepts that have worked elsewhere). ���They���re engaging in specialty as an investment or business decision as opposed to the rest of the world, which has done specialty a little bit hand-to-mouth,��� says Andrew Ford, president of coffee broker MTC Group, which sells green coffee to hundreds of clients in South Korea. ���There are some very passionate coffee people there. But they���re making very commercial decisions.��� Indeed, South Korea���s evolution into specialty coffee hotspot is unlike that of any other coffee hub. It���s a tale that swirls together global economics, growth-focused business owners and 21st-century tactics in the art of standing out. In a way, in fact, the nation symbolizes specialty coffee���s global expansion. A ccording to Steven Kil, who runs a South Korean importing and training company called Specialty Coffee Incorporation, the specialty boom began in his country in the early 2000s when Starbucks (surprise, surprise) and a few domestic chains began opening in high-end hotels. These international-feeling hangouts helped fill the void left by small, traditional caf��s called tea courts that Korea���s military government had shut down before the 1988 Seoul Olympics in an effort to make the nation seem forward-thinking. South Korea���s economy was sailing in the early 2000s, and it didn���t take long before coffee���which had long been consumed in the country but never had any cool cred to it��� became part of growth strategies. ���Korean entrepreneurs saw opportunity,��� Kil says. ���They started to open even fancier franchise caf��s and advertised with young superstars [popular actors and singers]. This all boosted the interest in coffee among youngsters.��� The story took a twist in 2007 when, at the outset of the global recession, South continued on page 40 freshcup.com March 2013 39