How China’s Specialty Coffee Market Exploded in the Last Decade
I first entered the world of specialty coffee around 2010. At that time, the development of specialty coffee across China was still in its infancy. Most people still viewed coffee as a “bourgeois lifestyle,” a bit of a luxury, something bitter, something you couldn’t drink without sugar... and so on. But do you know how dramatically China’s specialty coffee landscape has changed in the past 10–15 years? What happened along the way? Today, based on market reports and data I’ve reviewed, let’s take a look back together. We can begin with some tangible, quantifiable data. In the past decade, China’s coffee consumption has grown by 150% . The trade of green coffee beans has surged, with demand for imports from Brazil and Ethiopia skyrocketing. In 2023–24, Brazil’s coffee exports to China increased by 186.1% year-over-year. Domestic coffee consumption in China has been growing at an annual rate of over 15% —more than five times the 2023/24 global average reported by the Internation...