Instant Coffee Dominates Youth Chinese Coffee Market

Coffee vs. Tea, Trends and Insights — By Joey on November 4, 2009 at 11:36 am

It’s no secret that instant coffee is cheap, convenient, easy, and well, of course, instant. Nestle details the production process on their website, and it combines a process of selection, blending, grinding, evaporation, and blast drying to end up with the granular powder we all know and love and pour into our cups of steaming water.

Instant coffee has perhaps been both a bane and boon for university student coffee drinkers in China. On one hand it has introduced the coffee taste and concept into the lifestyle of young Chinese, but on the other hand, it has diluted the knowledge and surrounding culture of quality coffee taste.

We’ve conducted some quick surveys with Chinese university students and the majority of them drink instant coffee or tea. Another informal glance into the Douban group, “Drink Coffee to Death” which has over 2550 members, lists their favorite instant coffee brands. These are:

  1. Nestle
  2. Maxwell House
  3. Ben Cafe
  4. UCC
  5. Klassno

Nestle and Maxwell House (part of the Kraft Foods stable) are from the American coffee Market. Interestingly, Ben Cafe and Klassno are from Singapore, and UCC is a popular Japanese brand. And as recently as 2003, Nestle and Maxwell House combined held a 70% market share.


(photo credit, emerson.catarina)

Something also interesting to note is the prevalent use of 3+1 (or 2+1) on the packages of these instant coffees in China and other parts of Asia compared to the more lavish descriptions of the same instant coffee in European and American markets. Is there a way that instant coffee can transcend its functional and convenient perception in China with this 3+1 on the packaging? Perhaps companies could additionally experiment with re-branding and re-designing the “instant coffee” name in China to further the progression to more traditional coffee drinking avenues. This is where the future growth of Coffee drinking amongst Chinese youth lies.

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    3 Comments

  • Luke says:
    November 4, 2009 at 4:03 pm

    How available is filter coffee in China and how widespread are chains such as Starbucks?

    There was a time students in the UK swore by instant coffee, but once the ‘proper’ coffee stores arrived and young people developed a taste for it there was no going back for most.

  • Joey says:
    November 5, 2009 at 11:36 am

    Thanks for the comments Luke.

    Heading into any grocery store here in Shanghai, filter coffee is available but compared to instant coffee it’s about 80% instant to 20% filter of dedicated shelf space. The price is also very high compared to instant coffee. This could be a reason for this.

    I think you raise an excellent point, and also one that I was trying to convey: as income rises and coffee shop coffee becomes affordable, instant coffee’s market share will definitely decrease in China. It’s simply a matter of time.