Cafes nationwide top 100,000 to double convenience stores

Industry

Published: 01 Jul. 2024, 16:23

Cafes nationwide top 100,000 to double convenience stores

There are now more than 100,000 coffee shops across Korea ? double the combined number of convenience stores. [JOONGANG ILBO]

There are now more than 100,000 coffee shops across Korea — double the combined number of convenience stores.

Statistics Korea’s service sector investigation report released June 30 showed that there were 100,729 total coffee shops throughout the country as of late 2022, a 4.5 percent increase from the previous year.

It is the first year the coffee shop count surpassed 100,000, twice the number of coffee shops in 2016. There were a total of 51,551 coffee shops as of 2016.

Over 84 percent of the coffee shops were small-scale operations run by staffs of four or fewer.

Korea became the second-highest nation in the world in terms of coffee consumption, beating the United States and only short of France, as of 2020, according to global market research firm Euromonitor.

Koreans drank an average of 405 cups of coffee last year, according to the Korea Agro-Fisheries & Food Trade Corporation, more than double the world average of 152 cups.

BY CHO YONG-JUN [cho.yongjun1@joongang.co.kr]