In to years of operations, the world’s largest coffee and lifestyle cafe chain Starbucks has opened a little over 300 outlets across India. Worldwide, the company operates over 30,000 cafe, more than half of them only in North America including in the US & Canada. Cafe Coffee Day, the homegrown cafe chain breached over 1,500 cafes in India around 2018-19 just before the untimely demise of its Founder & CEO VG Siddhartha. From its peak, the chain is now said to be operating over 350 cafes all India. UK’s Costa Coffee, Australia’s Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf and another homegrown Barista Cafe have no more than 50 outlets eat (or less).
At present, India has over 4.500 coffee shops of various sizes and concepts. This number, however doesn’t include the exclusively promoted tea-chains such as Chaayos, Chai-Point, among others in the category.
Australia’s Coffee Club is planning to enter India with real estate major CK Israni group and is evaluation whether to commence business from New Delhi or Mumbai. The Coffee Club is owned by Minor DKL Food Group, a leading Australian retail food brand franchisor. Minor DKL Food Group is the franchisor and intellectual property owner of The Coffee Club franchise system with close to 450 stores across fourteen countries in the Pacific, Asia and the Middle East, we are the largest Australian café chain and one of the largest in the world. Minor DKL Food Group is also the owner of Veneziano Coffee Roasters, a leading specialty coffee roasting house supplying wholesale and retail customers throughout Australia from roasting facilities in Melbourne and Brisbane.
India’s appetite for coffee (the lifestyle format cafes) seem to be only growing by the day. For a country where more than 90% of the population doing Tea first thing in the morning and more or less all day, the per capita consumption of coffee is among the lowest in the world. In fact, over 80% of the coffee produced in India’s southern region in Coorg, Chikmagalur and Kerala are exported. Sit-down cafes started trending after the new millennium with more Indian travelling abroad on work and leisure. Exposure to international varieties of coffee, higher disposable income and a third for some invincible hot coffee is drinking Indians crazy!
Coffee Club should not find it too difficult to expand in India. As long as they do not focus on just coffee, that is. Indian’s crave for food along with beverages at cafes and restaurants. In fact the focus is more on food than one coffee (or the experience like in western countries). The same is with Asian countries like China, Singapore, Indonesia, etc. where discerning consumers visit coffee shops for the beverage than for a bite.
With a massive expansion strategy in the short term and in a particular region (than going pan-India), Coffee Club might look to have a solid base of first time coffee connoisseurs.
