
IMM taps Korea’s coffee cravings
Statistics alone do not capture the role coffee has come to play in South Korean culture. Starbucks entered the country in 1999 and it is now the firm's sixth-largest market globally by store numbers, with 556 in operation as of March and plans to take it to 700 by 2016. Growth expectations are predicated on an estimated 17-fold increase in market size to KRW2.48 trillion ($2.19 billion) in the four years to 2011.
Yet the Korean coffee craze didn't start with Starbucks, argues Joseph Lee, partner and senior managing director at IMM Private Equity. Its origins lie in South Korea's tea house culture and the need for...
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