FRANCE AND COFFEE
Coffee is the second most consumed beverage after water in France. Pointless to say that is a really strategic market with a huge competition across the country. Let’s see how French consume coffee and let’s analyze how companies adapt their strategies to promote and sell their products.
According to the ICO (International coffee organization) statistics, the per capita consumption of coffee in France was 5.2 Kg in 2014. Around 90% of French drink coffee and 85% everyday. Unlike our british or german neighbor, the most consumed coffe in France is the « Espresso ».
The global market value in France in 2012 was 2.279 billions € (it represent an increase of 16.30% regarding 2011).
Coffe is available in a lot of different way, used by all different range of the population and for numerous reasons. Coffee can be drink for several reasons such as :
The taste of the beverage
Available everywhere in every form
The coffee awake people and keep them awake
The « tradition » of the cofee break at work
Coffe replace more and more the dessert
Socialization by the coffee. It represent a relaxing moment and facilitate the discussion between people.
We can observ years after years a radical change in the way coffee are consume in France. Before, coffee were mostly consume in bars and restaurants but others competitors came and change totally the habits.
Nespresso is one of them, followed after by competitors. The company brought the new « dosette system » and created 3 billions of sales in 2011 and a prediction of 7 billions for 2015. The way of consumption change radically with the democratisation of the coffe machine at home.
Beside the 1,700 patents used to protect this invention, competitors managed to create their own dosette (such as L’or Expresso or even the brand distributors).
These 10 last years, we also observ a huge increase in the takeaway sales with new phenomenon such as Starbucks, illy bars, Costa coffee or Macdonald’s Café. These brands offers a new experience of coffee with a wide range of product and more services in their shops (Free Wi-Fi for instance).
Illy Café, the high quality coffee brand is about to open another « Esressamente » coffee bar, Place de l’Odeon in Paris.