Hot Drinks - China

The Hot Drinks market includes the segments Coffee, Tea and Cocoa. The Coffee segment is further broken down into Roast Coffee and Instant Coffee. Roast Coffee includes roasted, “fresh” coffee in the form of beans, ground powder, pads or pods, while Instant Coffee denotes coffee that that has been processed by freeze-drying or spray drying to prolong shelf life and generate powder mixes from which coffee beverages can be obtained without further equipment just by adding water. Tea includes fresh leaves, bags, pads or pods of the tea plant Camellia Sinensis and Yerba mate but excludes herbal infusions (mint, rooibos etc.). Cocoa includes ready-made powder-mixes from which cocoa drinks or hot chocolate can be prepared by adding water, milk or similar liquids. Ready-to-Drink (RTD) beverages are not included here but appear in the Ready-to-Drink (RTD) Coffee & Tea segment of the Consumer Market Outlook’s Non-Alcoholic Drinks section.

In retail, the biggest player in the Hot Drinks Coffee segment is Nestlé whose Nespresso and Nescafé brands are globally recognized household names. Other important players are Jacobs Douwe Egberts (JDE), Keurig Dr Pepper, Tchibo, J.M. Smucker and Lavazza. Out of home, Starbucks, Tim Hortons, Panera Bread, Costa Coffee, Peet’s Coffee, Dunkin’ Donuts and Caribou Coffee are the most important players. An important company in the background of both at-home and out-of-home coffee is the Luxembourg-based JAB Holding which has built a sizable portfolio in retail and coffee shop brands and owns at least partially both Jacobs Douwe Egberts and Keurig Dr Pepper as well as Panera Bread, Peet’s Coffee and Caribou Coffee among others. In the Tea segment, Unilever (Lipton), Associated British Foods (Twinings) and Tata Global Beverages (Tetley) are the biggest players by revenue while Nestlé is the most important player in the Cocoa realm.

The market for Hot Drinks is structured into retail sales for at home consumption and on-premise or foodservice sales for out-of-home consumption. The at-home market, also called off-trade market, covers all retail sales via super- and hypermarkets, convenience stores or similar sales channels. The out-of-home market, also called on-trade market, away-from-home market or HORECA encompasses all sales to hotels, restaurants, catering, cafés, bars and similar hospitality service establishments. Both the at-home and the out-of-home market are valued at retail selling prices including all sales and consumption taxes. The price per unit in the out-of-home market always references the total price over the kg amount of coffee, tea or cocoa consumed, regardless of the other components of the finished beverage. The valuation of the out-of-home segment at retail prices means a significant change of the market definition in comparison to earlier iterations of the Consumer Market Outlook, as out-of-home consumption was valued at wholesale prices before. This means, market totals are not comparable to published data from prior years. The price per unit always references liters as a base unit for both at-home and out-of-home consumption. One liter of beverage represents typical serving sizes of 2 to 5 glasses (0.2 to 0.5 liters).

The shown market share of eCommerce currently references the share of eCommerce sales of all food and beverages in the selected region in relation to total (off-trade) consumer spending on food and beverages that are also part of the Key Market Indicators table below. It therefore presents an indicator regarding the overall online penetration of eCommerce’s last frontier, food and drink, but cannot be used to track the performance of the Alcoholic Drinks as opposed to Non-Alcoholic Drinks, Food, Hot Drinks or Tobacco Products.

The presented data is the result of extensive research from secondary sources like national and international statistical offices, trade associations and the trade press. Typical sources are for example household budget surveys or statistics on industrial production and international trade. All data has been processed and forecasted using statistical techniques like regression and cluster analyses to obtain comparable data for a global outlook of the market. Since all market data in the Consumer Market Outlook are usually composed of multiple input data points, including estimations for missing data, no specific external source can be named for individual timelines. The range of the historical input data varies greatly by country and product but in most cases currently runs up until 2017 or 2018.

All market data is shown in nominal values that have been converted from local currencies to US-Dollars, Euro and British Pound using the average exchange rates of 2017. The currency can be switched between US-Dollars, Euro and British Pound by using the context menu to the upper right next to the download button. Depending on the user’s needs, the Key Market Indicators table at the bottom of the page contains additional forecasts on consumer prices and the exchange rate with which it is possible to obtain a valuation in local currency, to include projected currency effects in the forecast or to adjust the nominal market data to constant prices.