While Americans prefer roasted beans and fresh brewed coffee – with a large proportion enamored with high-end artisan offerings – the rest of the world is leaning the other way, toward instant coffee.
Instant coffee accounts for more than 34 percent of all the retail brewed coffee consumed globally, and sales have nearly tripled since 2000, reaching $31 billion last year, according to data from market research firm Euromonitor. Sales are expected to increase nearly 13 percent to $35 billion by 2018. The increase over the past few years has been steady and substantial.
“The markets where instant coffee is most popular tend to be the ones without a strong tradition of coffee drinking,” Dana LaMendola, an industry analyst at Euromonitor, told The Modesto Bee. “It’s basically an entry point.”
In fact, India and China are two of the fastest growing markets, and Asia Pacific is the single largest instant coffee market in terms of sales.
“In newer coffee-drinking regions, instant coffee is appealing because of its ability to satisfy the needs of new coffee drinkers and their evolving tastes,” the Euromonitor report said. “Unlike established coffee markets, where coffee is a product with well-defined perceptions of taste, strength and origin, in emerging coffee markets, coffee is viewed as a multipurpose product with endless functional and flavor possibilities.”
But instant coffee sales are also growing in more developed markets. In fact, half the world seems to prefer instant coffee, according to Euromonitor. In Australia and New Zealand, for example, instant coffee accounts for more than 75 percent of retail brewed coffee consumed, the highest percentage registered for any region.
Even regions often associated with coffee snobbery give in to the convenience of instant. In Eastern Europe, instant coffee accounts for more than 50 percent of overall retail brewed coffee consumption, while in Western Europe, it accounts for more than 25 percent. Combined, the two regions drink 40 percent of the world’s instant coffee.
The United States is the only real exception to the instant coffee craze.
“The U.S. is entirely unique in its aversion to instant coffee,” LaMendola said. “Even in Europe, where fresh coffee is preferred, instant coffee is still seen as acceptable for at-home and on-the-go consumption. In the U.S., the view is just much more negative.”
Since 2008, instant coffee sales in the U.S. have hardly grown, and last year declined slightly to just more than $960 million, a small percentage of the $30-plus billion U.S. coffee market.
