In the UK alone this year, research suggests that the coffee shop market will boost as consumers are set to spend £4billion this year. That is a lot of lattes!

Whilst it may not be a shock to you that the coffee market is doing well, with sales being reported to be up £1bn since 2015 (Mintel), there are no signs on the climbing numbers stopping any time soon. Whether you are a coffee shop owner, a coffee lover, or somewhere in between, you will be contributing to the next boom in the coffee market.

The research and stats

The numbers from the research conducted by Mintel have some interesting findings to go along with the £4bn strapline.

Fast food chains:

A quarter of consumers buy hot drinks from fast food restaurants. This is interesting one as not so many years ago fast  food chains used to have a reputation for not serving great quality coffee. The recent surge around coffee culture and expectation of good coffee everywhere has influenced the market in this direction.

In-store cafés:

The café you will see in your local supermarket or department store are cashing as a fifth of consumers buy coffee from these. An important factor here is convenience, as this acts as an upsell to consumers to save needing to go elsewhere or for a mid-shop pitstop.

Traditional café/coffee shop:

One is six actively look for a traditional café for their coffee fix. This is typically targeted towards your big high street brands, detailing that 48% of the UK consumers visited Costa Coffee in a three month period, with Starbucks not far behind at 30%.

A steady increase looking to reach £4.5bn by 2024. At nearly 26,000 outlets across the UK now what will this number look like in four years’ time?

The fifth wave coffee boom

We are now in the fifth wave of the coffee, we have spoken about this previously but it is a combination of all previous four waves –  Tradition, Branded Chains, Artisan and The Science of Coffee, but not seeking out excellence in their coffee. This means that consumers are much more informed, they want to know where the coffee is from, if it was farmed ethically, what brewing processes are available etc.

This is great, but not just for the big coffee chains but independent coffee shops too. Independents a known for being passionate about coffee, many of which roast themselves and take great care in selecting beans from specific regions etc. The number of “quality independent” coffee shops in London have risen from about 50 in 2010 to more than 400 in 2020 alone.

If you run a coffee shop, restaurant or serve coffee out of your shop, you can serve great tasting coffee without being a trained experienced barista. You can have a perfect coffee at the touch of a button with a WMF coffee machine. Download a brochure to see the whole range.