SEOUL, KOREA - "We will open 4,000 overseas coffeehouses, with coffee bean exports of 2,000 tons by 2017." Kim Sun-kwon, CEO of Caffe Bene said this on July 17 in the completion ceremony for its coffee roasting plant in Yangju, Gyeonggi Province. He added, "My company will focus more on overseas expansion instead of the domestic market that has reached a saturation point."
Korea's largest specialty coffee chain spent 18.8 billion won to build the Yangju plant since 2012. By introducing a hot-air roaster, the company could shorten the roasting process to 6 minutes from more than 10 minutes. The roasting capacity is 7,738 tons a year from the current 1,533 tons, more than a five-fold increase.
Caffe Bene will sell most of the coffee roasted in the Yangju plant overseas, largely in China and Southeast Asia. He further said, "Thanks to the Korean Wave, the perception toward our Caffe Bene brand is quite high. Within this year, we will increase the number of stores in China to more than 900 from the current 410. The company aspires to increase the overseas store number to 4,000 by 2017 from 546 today. If the store opening can proceed as planned, its coffee bean exports would rise to 2,000 tons from the current 200 tons within four years.
As for the domestic market situation, he commented, "It is extremely hard to expand domestically due to severe regulation on expansion. As the number of Caffe Bene locations increases over 900, we have become a target for government regulation including restriction on the distance with the nearby Caffe Bene store. There was a time when I hope we could have been a second biggest operator in the coffeehouse market."
저작권자 © Korea IT Times 무단전재 및 재배포 금지
