Cupped coffee from Maeil Dairies– Café Latte and Baristar — reflects the wide tastes of coffee and tea consumers.
Emperor Gojong (1852-1919) is known to be the first Korean who ever drank coffee in the country. After the assassination of his spouse, Empress Myeongseong (1851-1895), he escaped to the Russian Embassy in 1896 under threat for his life. There, he first tasted coffee and became a coffee devotee.
More than 110 years have passed, and now coffee shops are everywhere across Korea. A wide variety of coffee products are on display at almost all convenience stores and supermarkets across the country, making it hard to remember each and every brand name or category of coffee drink.
It can be said that most, if not all, adults love coffee. As its popularity has risen, the needs and demands for coffee taste and aroma have become widely varied. To meet such demand, advancements have been made in the range of coffee products on sale in the market. The coffee market that in the past was largely divided between brewed coffee and instant coffee has now become much broader as instant coffee moved upmarket.
In the past, the market for instant coffee used to be represented by powdered coffee mixes. However, the launch of “cupped coffee,” similar to canned coffee but offered in a plastic cup complete with lid and straw, has now captured a wide swath of the overall coffee market, while still making continuous improvements.
In 1997, Maeil Dairies developed its Café Latte line of coffee drinks, the first instant coffee in a cup made in Korea. So-called “cupped coffee” products enabled people to drink their normally chilled coffee through a straw instead of drinking it from a can. The new packaging soon took off, mainly among young consumers. As cupped coffee’s market share expanded, the company released more varieties, branching out with its “double shot” series, such as Double Shot Cappuccino and Double Shot Mocha Latte, to reflect the various consumer tastes. The firm also released other latte varieties that are not based on coffee, such as milk tea latte, chocolate latte and green tea latte.
According to Maeil Dairies, its Low-sugar Espresso Latte from its Baristar line of coffee products reduces the amount of sugar by 30 percent, compared to similar existing products, allowing people to fully enjoy the unique, deep, rich taste of its espresso.
Maeil launched its Baristar line of coffee products in 2007. Baristar drinks were designed to be a luxury cupped coffee that adds more expertise and quality, in terms of coffee brewing, to the existing line of Café Latte drinks. Since its launch, Baristar has been helping the company secure an ever-larger share of the domestic cupped coffee market.
The firm applies its so-called “Baristar’s Rule” in order to find quality beans to make this coffee through a customized roasting process. The rule is designed to select rare, quality beans produced in alpine regions in Indonesia or Costa Rica. Such beans only account for about one percent of the total coffee bean production worldwide. Under this rule, the beans are selected by expert baristas and coffee experts, like Q Grader-qualified coffee specialists, and then roasted in a tailored manner in order to maintain the true aroma of the beans and to add more flavor to the coffee.
Finally, as it continues to expand the cupped coffee market, Maeil has been enjoying its popularity among consumers with its recently-released Baristar line. It now includes Low-sugar Espresso Latte and its black coffee series of drinks under the brands Guatemala, Costa Rica and Mandelling.
By Yoon Sojung
Korea.net Staff Writer
arete@korea.kr
