Mumbaikars would soon get to have the famed ?filter coffee? at branded outlets. Coffee Day Fresh & Ground, a division of India?s largest coffee conglomerate Amalgamated Bean Coffee Trading Company (ABCTCL), which owns the Cafe Coffee Day chain of shops, will now roll out coffee kiosks and Kaapi Guru machines serving filter coffee outside the four south Indian states where it has been operational since 1996.
Fresh n’ Ground, which is the market leader in the organised roast & ground filter coffee segment with 425 exclusive outlets in Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and Kerala, has launched its first coffee shop in Mumbai, in the neighbourhood of Matunga ? the south Indian hub of the city.
In the next 1-2 years, the company plans to add 10 more coffee shops and install 5,000 filter coffee machines across various hotels, food courts, restaurants, shops-in-shops etc in the city. “The demand for filter coffee has grown in Mumbai in the last 4 years and we thought this is the right time to enter the market,” says CJ Jayanth, president of Coffee Day Fresh & Ground.
While Mumbai’s fairly large south Indian population has created an attractive filter coffee market, the absence of any other organised player in the segment has granted Fresh & Ground the first mover advantage. “No one retails filter coffee outside south India,” says Jayanth. “HUL is present in the packaged filter coffee segment through its brand Bru Cafe but they operate through the FMCG route.”
According to industry estimates, the annual consumption of coffee in India is 1 lakh tonnes, of which 40% is filter coffee. Packaged filter coffee, especially, is poised for strong growth riding on more shelf space in modern retail stores. Besides this, coffee drinkers today are more aware of beverages than before.
“The filter coffee market is opening up in India with consumers going beyond instant coffee and looking to experiment with new blends and flavours,” says Saloni Nangia, president (retail) at Technopak Advisors.
“Even quick service restaurants like McDonald’s have now introduced filter coffee in their menu, indicating a shift in coffee tastes and patterns,” she says.
Some of the other organised players in the filter coffee segment are Tata Coffee’s “Coorg Filter Coffee”, a chain launched in 1993. It has 35 outlets in the state of Tamil Nadu, the country’s largest roast and ground coffee market.
Coffee Day Fresh & Ground, will eventually roll out cafes in other cities such as Delhi, Kolkata and so on.
?Depending on the market response to filter coffee retailing, we’ll expand our operations in other cities,? says Jayanth of Fresh & Ground.