[외식업]당신은 커피를 좋아하고, 버거킹은 이를 알고 있다

Coffee

You Love Coffee, and Burger King Knows This

By Justin Bachman on February 15, 2013

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-02-15/you-love-coffee-and-burger-king-knows-this#r=nav-fs

Guess what? Americans really like coffee. In a show of how true this is, Burger King (BKW) has upgraded its standard, rather uninspired brew with a new line from Seattle’s Best Coffee, part of the Starbucks (SBUX) empire.

That follows a similar effort by McDonald’s (MCD) in 2007 to serve a better cup of joe. Two years later the company went all-in with its McCafé line of premium coffee drinks, for which the company credited a 25 percent jump in its 2009 coffee sales. In 2011, Wendy’s (WEN) followed the coffee-upgrade trend with its Redhead Roasters brand. Burger King is clearly playing catch-up in the espresso battles, but recent history shows there are plenty of coffee guzzlers to go around.

All of this new, purportedly improved coffee at the fast-food chains was spurred, in part, by Americans’ highly public love affair with Starbucks, Caribou, Peet’s, Tim Hortons (THI), Tully’s, Coffee Beanery, Stumptown, and thousands of other shops big and small across the land. If every corner once had a mailbox or pay phone, it now has a coffee retailer peddling caffeine.

And we love it. Each day, 65 percent of Americans drink at least one cup of coffee, well ahead of soft drinks, the National Coffee Association reported last year. Consumption of the gourmet stuff grew from 37 percent of all cups in 2011 to nearly half (46 percent) in 2012. Much of this coffee is being drunk at home: 293.7 millon cups per day, up from 280.5 million in 2009, according to Experian Marketing Service (EXPGY), a global marketing firm. (We’re also more revved up—the amount of decaf has dropped in the past four years, Experian says.)

More to the point for Burger King: Eighteen percent of the chain’s customers drink espresso or cappuccino, compared with 16 percent of all U.S. adults, Experian researchers have found. Burger King has 10 new coffee drinks, including lattes, iced, and a regular that starts at $1. The new blend is lighter than the old, designed to pair equally well with sweet and salty menu items, Eric Hirschhorn, Burger King’s vice president of global innovation, said in an interview on Wednesday. “Over the past several years the American coffee drinker has become more and more sophisticated, and the demand for delicious coffee is growing,” he said.

All of which raises the question: As we evolve into drinking better coffee that’s sold everywhere, is there any limit on coffee demand?

Peruse the voluminous risk factors in Starbucks’s 2012 annual report and nowhere will one find anything along the lines of, “Americans could decide one morning to just kick the coffee habit or to drink a whole lot less.” Nope, the Seattle behemoth warns investors about the price of arabica beans, the vagaries of consumer discretionary spending, and how the Affordable Care Act could boost its labor costs.

Those of us who jones for java? We aren’t going anywhere—unless it’s trading one primo brand for another, such as Caribou for the new Burger King. Starbucks does flag that possibility: “In the U.S., the ongoing focus by large competitors in the quick-service restaurant sector on selling high-quality specialty coffee beverages could adversely affect our sales and results of operations.”

요약

맥도날드를 뒤를 이어 버거킹은 스타벅스 달리 새로운 기준으로 업그레이드했다. 맥도날드는 2009년에 프리미엄 커피 라인 맥카페로 커피 매출을 25% 증가시켰다. 2011년에 웬디스(Wendy’s)는 Redhead Roasters 프로그램으로 커피 트렌드를 따랐고, 버거킹은 커피 전쟁에 합류를 했으나 고전을 면치 못하고 있다. 이처럼 패스트 푸드점의 향상된 커피는 박차를 가했다. 

 지난 해 국립 커피 협회에 따르면, 미국인의 65%가 매일 적어도 한 잔의 커피를 마신다고 한다. 또한 고급 커피의 소비량이 2011년에 비해 거의 절반가량이 증가했고, 이 중 대부분은 집에서 소비했다고 한다. 

 버거킹은 $1부터 시작해서 10가지 새 커피 메뉴를 가지고 있다. 버거킹의 부사장 Eric Hirschhorn은 지난 인터뷰에서 말했다. "미국인 커피 애호가들은 점점 정교해지고 있고, 맛있는 커피에 대한 수요가 증가하고 있다." 

 여기서 질문 하나가 생각날 것이다. 모든 곳에서 더 나은 커피를 판매한다면, 커피 수요에 대한 제한이 있을까? 2012 스타벅스 애뉴얼 리포트와 그 외에서는 미국인들이 커피 소비량을 줄일 것이라는 이야기도 있었지만, 스타벅스는 아카비카 커피의 가격과 소비자들의 다양한 소비량, 어떻게하면 Affordable Care Act(미국의 새로운 의료 서비스가) 노동비를 높일 수 있는지에 대해 경고했다. 미국에서 고품질의 전문 커피 음료를 판매에 초점을 두고 있는 패스트 레스토랑 부문에서 강력한 경쟁자는 부정적인 매출과 운영 결과에 영향을 끼칠지도 모른다.