Premium Tea South Korea
Iced matcha latte from Jeju Organic Farm.
By Joel Petersson Ivre
A drum set is squeezed in the corner of a sun-drenched rooftop balcony at Harney & Sons teahouse in Seoul’s quiet Yeonhui-dong area. Three contractors are discussing how best to put shades over the balcony in preparation for the scorching heat of the Korean summer.
For now, the inside offers better shade, but the view of the Bukhansan Mountain — where the company will soon open its seventh venue — far in the distance is almost as good. Inside, owner Kim Young-sun offers customers samples of a number of imported blends before taking their order, either hot or iced.
“We just opened in January, so it has been too cold for us to use the drum set yet,” explains store manager Sun Young, “but when summer comes, we are planning to have two performances per week.”
“The atmosphere is very important,” she adds.
This reflects an approach to premium tea which has quickly gained approval in Korea. Harney & Sons are tapping into Koreans’ increasing demand for premium and customized tea experiences, explains country manager Patrick Choi. Local operators are given much freedom to shape the character of each venue, arranging poetry slams or hand painting maps on the wall.
Going green
Under the slogan “tea reimagined,” industry giant Starbucks made its own inroads into the Korean premium tea market, by introducing its Teavana brand to South Korea in 2016.
With 103 new licensed stores opened in 2019, bringing the total up to 1,334 in Korea, Teavana has a larger presence in South Korea than anywhere else in the world outside the United States. Green tea is finding new creative uses, especially matcha tea. The finely ground tea powder (which Koreans call “malcha”) is used in everything, not only in drinks but also in snacks or as an aesthetically pleasing layer of green powder on cream pastries and cakes.
Recently, Starbucks added two limited matcha drinks to its menu, with the raw material sourced from the southern island of Jeju. Starbucks in Korea continues to see steady growth in the tea category, a press representative told STiR by email.
This was not only a savvy business move, as Jeju green tea has a special ring to Korean ears, but also a political one. South Korean Starbucks stopped orders for Japanese matcha tea, following an infected trade dispute between Korea and Japan last summer, which led to a countrywide boycott of Japanese products.
Green tea from Jeju is also a part of the foundational history of Amore Pacific, one of Korea’s leading skincare companies. In August 2019, the company spun off its Osulloc green tea and health brand to “reinforce Osulloc’s brand image as a premium organic green tea brand,” the Korea Herald reported.
At the same time, Amore Pacific also opened a green tea probiotics research center that, will “develop products using green tea lactic acid bacteria in health foods and cosmetics,” a goal that underlines the interest in non-drinking applications of green tea.
Coffee too commonplace
These efforts are a part of an industry-wide effort to reinvigorate a stuffy tea industry that has long struggled to claim market share from coffee in Korea. Tea, a thousand-year tradition in Korea, saw coffee overtake it in just a couple of decades, as the country quickly modernized.
Today, coffee — both ground and instant mixes — outsells tea by orders of magnitude. The coronavirus crisis makes predictions for 2020 difficult, but according to online portal Statista, 2020 revenue for the Korean tea industry is around US$370 million, while ground coffee is predicted to generate $5 billion.
Even instant coffee, which cosmopolitan coffee lovers might wrinkle their noses at, is as Korean as metal bowls and chopsticks. Statista predicts revenue at around $7 billion for 2020. This is obvious to anyone who has ever spent time in a Korean office, where every kitchenette is equipped with a little box of assorted instant or 3-in-1 mixes (coffee, milk powder, sugar) right next to a water tank that conveniently dispenses hot water.
By comparison, Koreans see tea taking more time and effort, says Yoo Yang-Seok, professor at Kookmin University, who has written The Book of Korean Tea, the first English language book on Korean tea.
But within the ubiquity of coffee may lie the key to success of tea. A recent study from Woosong University on the caffeine intake habits of Korean college students suggests that they overwhelmingly favor coffee over tea. The study notes that while coffee is consumed as a stimulant, Koreans tend to drink tea for social reasons.
“Tea is more interesting than coffee. Coffee is too normal,” says Sun, the manager at Harney & Sons in Yeonhui-dong, using an expression that can also be translated as “commonplace” or “nothing special.”
Treating yourself in the face of adversity
The desire for premium experiences persists, even in the economic insecurity brought about by the coronavirus crisis. Korea has handled the crisis better than most other countries, but the worldwide impact of the crisis is still expected to hit the export-dependent Korean economy hard.
If Korean incomes begin to fall, then one might reasonably expect that consumers would prefer consumer staples like coffee, rather than discretionary indulgences like premium teas.
However, Professor Yoo points out that the growing popularity of self-care and well-being treatments at homecan cancel out and keep the level of tea drinking at par or even higher with what it was before.
The virus has given Koreans an excuse to slow down their fast-paced lifestyles, and this means that tea — seen as both healthy and relaxing — should see an upswing in the near future, says Yoo.
New prospects
For his part, Patrick Choi, the country manager at Harney & Sons says the company is yet to see any negative effect on its business due to the coronavirus crisis, which suggests that tea aficionados might not be staying home, after all.
Even men, a previously untapped demographic for premium teas in Korea, have started to drink tea. Once viewed as a feminine drink, the perception of tea is slowly changing, according to Choi.
“I would say that our customers are 70% female, but we are seeing more men, as well. This is a big change from a few years ago when the male customer base didn’t exist,” he says.
“Of course, it’s not always easy to tell if the guy who comes in to buy tea is buying for himself or was asked to by his girlfriend,” he adds, laughing.
In the end, Yoo and Choi agree on one thing — the future of Korean teas looks bright. Whether at home, at big players like Starbucks, or in customized café settings, premium tea is not going cold any time soon in South Korea.