Market Heats Up! Fresh-Ground Coffee Market Enters the Fast Lane

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Freshly Ground Coffee

Freshly ground coffee refers to coffee made by grinding fresh coffee beans on-site into powder, then extracting through different methods. Whether it's from convenience stores, coffee shops, or when you make it yourself using pour-over, espresso, Americano, or other methods, as long as it meets the two conditions of being freshly prepared and ground, it can be called freshly ground coffee.

Recently, according to reports from China National Radio, under the new wave of coffee consumption, China's freshly ground coffee market continues to grow. The variety of coffee products in the Chinese market is constantly expanding, coupled with the huge demand from consumer groups and their deepening understanding of coffee. Driven by both supply and demand sides, China's coffee market is gradually entering the fast lane.

It is understood that major countries such as the United States and Japan are dominated by freshly ground coffee in the market, while mainland China's market is still dominated by instant coffee. However, with the gradual penetration of coffee culture and the development of chain coffee brands on the supply side, the proportion of freshly ground coffee in the Chinese market is also continuously rising.

The types of coffee sold on the market are mainly divided into three categories: instant coffee, freshly ground coffee, and ready-to-drink coffee, with proportions of approximately 70%, 20%, and 10% respectively. Many experienced coffee enthusiasts' first choice is freshly ground coffee because such coffee is "freshest." Although the current proportion of freshly ground coffee is still less than instant coffee, it undoubtedly has the greatest development potential. Freshly ground coffee has gradually become a rapidly growing category in China.

According to the 2022 China Freshly Ground Coffee Industry Research Report released by iResearch, it is expected that by 2024, China's freshly ground coffee market size is expected to reach 190 billion yuan. With the growth of coffee consumer groups, their pursuit of higher coffee quality has also increased, which has driven the birth of more and more offline freshly ground coffee shops.

Currently, the production of freshly ground coffee mainly includes six consumption scenarios: chain coffee shops, independent coffee shops, fast food restaurants, tea shops, convenience stores, and self-service coffee machines. Data from Qichacha shows that as of now, there are 168,000 coffee-related enterprises in China in the past decade. According to incomplete statistics, in 2022, China had approximately 23,000 chain coffee shops, with Guangdong Province ranking first in the number of chain coffee shops among all provinces. Freshly ground coffee chain brands and chain coffee shops are mostly located in cities in southern Chinese provinces, while northern and central-western provinces and cities still have significant room for penetration.

In the past two years, China's freshly ground coffee market has mainly consisted of traditional coffee chain brands and emerging local coffee chain brands. Besides well-known brands such as Starbucks, Luckin Coffee, Manner, seesaw, and SATURNBIRD, even tea brands like HEYTEA and ChaYanYueSe, cross-industry enterprises like China Post Office and Li-Ning, and many other players have entered the coffee industry, with increasingly frequent store expansion actions.

Nowadays, more and more consumers are paying attention to their own health, becoming an emerging force in the healthy consumption market. They are willing to be planners and managers of their own healthy lives. Freshly ground coffee typically uses freshly roasted high-quality coffee beans, ground on-site by trained staff or baristas in stores, then extracted without additional additives, which can maximize the retention of coffee's original aroma and pure taste. Moderate consumption is beneficial to health.

Although freshly ground coffee is priced higher than other types of coffee products, with the continuous improvement of technical level and standardization capabilities in the entire coffee industry, as well as the further expansion of the coffee market and the continuous improvement of consumption levels, coffee product prices are gradually decreasing.

Image source: Internet

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