The U.S. Coffee Industry

If it weren't for the coffee, I'd have no identifiable personality whatsoever. ~David Letterman

Welcome

to the Coffee Industry Wiki, its intent is to serve as a way of staying informed about the on-goings of the industry and more importantly, learn about the ways to effectively use technology to gather and keep track of relevant information.

You can first get familiar with some background information for the coffee industry as well as get caught up on the news by reading the RSS feeds, you can find summaries of interesting or important articles at my news summary page.

Since you are the researching analyst continuing with this project, please carefully look at my evaluation of good websites and RSS feeds. As you start gathering more information, learn from the Specialist Tutorial I designed for you in order to master all the tools necessary for excellent information gathering.

After you learn the tools of how to gather information to continue this wiki, you will be armed with the necessary skills to venture into the unknown World Wide Web on your own. I am far from experienced and can only pass onto you what I know. By building a strong foundation, you will only be better than I at retrieving information!

Good Luck!

Brief Introduction to the Coffee Market

The U.S. coffee market is expanding as consumers explore new ways to make and drink coffee. From home brewed cups to blended gourmet beverages, the market has evolved and continues to do so.

Coffee consumer are now more sophisticated and more willing to explore new products. The average "cup of Joe" at the local store has evolved into complicated drinks that require diagrams to explain and a good cup of coffee is not just based on its taste, but perhaps also how pretty the decoration is.

coffee.jpg

The U.S. Market for Coffee and RTD Coffee, according to a report by Packaged Fact, is a $34 billion market. On the retail side, the report examines coffee sold for future brewing (beans and ground, and instant), RTD coffee sold in retail (e.g., Frappaccinos), and the phenomenon of “pod”-brewed coffee. This blog examines the developments in the coffee industry with an emphasis on the market leader Starbucks. While Starbucks leads the nation, many competitors are battling the Seattle superpower for market share, including local convenience stores and supermarkets.

In recent years, many competitors have entered the coffee industry. For instance, McDonald rolled out its McCafé specialty beverages concept and Procter & Gamble sold its Folger Coffee division to J.M. Smucker. Massive changes are brewing in the U.S. coffee market, where sales surged 11% in 2007 to reach $39.5 billion.

Just in Ann Arbor, there are two Starbucks, two Espresso Royale, a Bigby, and many other restaurants that sell blended coffee drinks.

This blog will explore the broad and complex trends affecting this market, including the effects of the economy, worldwide green coffee prices, changing coffee consumption trends, competition from other beverages like sodas and energy drinks, corporate social responsibility and health and wellness benefits.

Now that you know a little bit about the market, are you ready to get started?

The side and top navigation bars are designed to help you navigate through this website. Take your time to read through and absorb all the information.

  • You can read some more background information and learn about current events
  • Or get started right away with your training and tool tutorials
  • You can also use the custom search engine below to go out and search for some information on your own. You didn't think I would let you just fly off without wings just yet did you? This search engine will only search the sites I inputted - blogs and news site relevant to the coffee industry that might be helpful to you. Try it out with a simple query like ["Starbucks News"]

Unless otherwise stated, the content of this page is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 License