Specialty Coffee, From Taste to Market

While there are many reasons to choose a cafe, from price to shop atmosphere or accessibility, what ultimately brings customers back is the 'taste of the coffee'. In recent years, various data sources reveal that expectations regarding taste are rising quite rapidly.

South Korea's specialty coffee market accounted for only about 5% of the total coffee market back in 2015, but today it is estimated to have grown to around 20%, worth approximately 2 trillion KRW in scale. In a span of 10 years, its share has nearly quadrupled. In Open Survey's 'Cafe Trend Report 2025', consumers also picked 'bean quality' (58.4%) as the biggest criterion when judging a premium cafe. This indicates that taste, rather than interior, price, or location, is what defines brand image. It shows that bean quality and character, rather than price, are becoming the standard of choice.

As of the first quarter of 2025, the number of cafes in South Korea decreased for the first time since statistical records began. As the market reaches saturation, the question of 'how to differentiate' has instead become much clearer.

At the same time, the market is undergoing clear polarization. As seen by the entry of foreign premium brands that have spread like a trend domestically, the number of customers seeking specialty coffee costing over 5,000 KRW a cup is growing. On the other hand, the ultra-low-priced coffee market is also expanding. As a result, from the franchisor's perspective, it is no longer about choosing just one of the two flows; even brands that previously stayed in low-price competition can no longer ignore the 'quality image'.

Franchise Headquarters Are Also Making Moves

In line with this trend, franchise headquarters are continuing to make various attempts. A Twosome Place, which used to sell only a single line of Ethiopia Yirgacheffe Aricha, expanded its selection to a 3-continent single-origin lineup by adding coffee from Central and South America (Guatemala Antigua) and Oceania (Papua New Guinea Ulya) on its 20th anniversary in 2022. It currently operates a medium roast blend as an Americano bean option. Starbucks Korea's Reserve had focused on increasing its number of stores since its introduction in 2014, but in recent years, it has shifted its direction toward a 'Reserve-Only Store' model, leaving only a few key hubs in city centers.

Ediya is also trying to capture both 'cost-effectiveness' and 'specialty' images simultaneously by selling single-origin beans such as Colombia Supremo and Ethiopia Limu as separate products. Paul Bassett, which started with specialty positioning from the beginning, recently introduced Geisha G Blend at its Gangnam branch, becoming the only franchise cafe to sell Geisha regularly.

(Left) Paul Bassett, which regularly offers Geisha Blend / (Right) Paik's Coffee, collaborating with WBC Champion Boram Um

The approach of low-cost franchises is slightly different. Back in 2020, low-cost coffee brands only had around 3,000 stores combined, but today the market has expanded significantly, with Mega Coffee alone surpassing 4,000 stores. Since stores have grown as much as they can, the room for further price cuts has shrunk, and they must focus more on the 'quality story'.

In fact, looking at an article comparing four low-cost coffee brands published early this year, Paik's Coffee increased its specialty bean ratio from the previous 10% to 20% starting from the first half of last year. Compose Coffee blends 5% specialty coffee from Minas Gerais, Brazil (SCA 82 points), while TheVenti maintains a 5% level of blend and has added custom roasting and water quenching techniques. Mega Coffee is responding with the slogan '100% Premium Arabica'. The industry also explains this phenomenon as a kind of 'contrarian thinking'. Since the cost ratio of low-cost Americano is already around 40%, leaving almost no margin as a loss leader, their logic is that if there is no profit anyway, it is better to upgrade the brand image by using slightly better beans.

Why Dark Roast Beans Are Still the Mainstay

Looking only up to this point, it seems as though franchises have eagerly jumped onto the specialty trend. However, the specialty blending ratio of the top four low-cost brands is still in the 5% to 20% range, and even in premium lines, Reserve or single-origin options often exist only as 'specialty lines'. The standard espresso base of most stores is still heavily centered on dark roasts.

Unlike independent cafes, a franchise's condition for survival is to produce the exact same taste across tens or hundreds of stores. Consumers expect the same taste, regardless of which regional store they visit. Since dark roast beans show less flavor deviation even if the store, branch, or barista's skill level varies, they are the safest choice for headquarters prioritizing consistency and reproducibility. On the other hand, light or medium roasted beans can easily result in sharp acidity or become bland with even minor variable shifts, making them a high-risk option for multi-store operations.

Furthermore, domestic research (Kim & Lee, 2013) showed that Korean sensory evaluation subjects preferred a savory taste over acidity. This is viewed as being closely linked to their consumption history, where most coffee distributed in the domestic market featured instant and dark-roasted commercial coffee. In actual experiments, when people long accustomed to Starbucks-style dark roasts were given high-quality light roast beans (Panama Geisha), they reacted by saying, "It's watery and doesn't taste like coffee." Rather than a matter of inherent preference, it is closer to unfamiliarity due to experiences shaped by dark roasts.

The issue, however, is that consumer experiences are gradually changing. The growing sales in the specialty coffee market prove this. Then, how can franchises lead the market trend without losing consistency?

To Handle High-Quality Beans

Upgrading coffee bean quality does not simply mean using good green coffee. 'High-quality coffee' is achieved only when the bean's natural, unique flavors—whether acidity, sweetness, or body—are successfully transferred directly into the cup. However, as the bean grade goes up and the roast becomes lighter, this task becomes vastly more sensitive.

In particular, light-to-medium roasted beans, which are common in specialty coffee, are exceptionally tricky to handle. Because their structure expands less during the roasting process, they are denser and harder than dark roasts. With narrower gaps between particles, they offer higher resistance when water passes through, easily causing the 'channeling' phenomenon where water streams concentrate to one side. In short, it is easy to end up with an inconsistent, mediocre taste.

Therefore, to achieve quality flavor, several variables must align at once. First, temperature is crucial. Since the density is high and compounds do not dissolve easily, if the temperature is too low, under-extraction may occur no matter how much you adjust the grind size. Alongside this, precisely matching the grind size is key, and going through a pre-infusion process that evenly wets the coffee grounds at low pressure in the early stages of extraction allows water to spread evenly, reducing channeling. Rather than maintaining constant pressure throughout extraction, pulling different pressures in the early and late stages is required to draw out the sweetness and body hidden behind the acidity.

Temperature, grind size, pre-infusion, stage-by-stage pressure. Replicating all these variables simultaneously, and in the exact same way across every store, is a massive challenge. Rather than a single skilled barista adjusting it intuitively with a semi-automatic machine, achieving this consistently across multiple stores with an automatic machine requires hardware that can precisely control these variables. No matter how good the beans the headquarters select and the recipes they develop, if the machines in the stores cannot back up that level of precision, it ultimately remains a recipe on paper.

Yet, Limited Options

The issue is that there is a lack of equipment capable of delivering that level of sophistication. Currently, the espresso machine market is largely divided into semi-automatic and automatic options, both of which have their own limitations.

Semi-automatic machines allow for granular control of pressure and temperature, meaning they can, in principle, precisely extract the flavor of high-quality beans. However, that precision ultimately relies on the skill level of the barista working at that specific branch on that particular day. Franchises have tens or hundreds of stores, and recruiting as well as maintaining skilled staff consistently at every location is a major challenge in itself. Indeed, according to the Ministry of Employment and Labor's Labor Force Survey (2022), the turnover rate in the accommodation and food service industry is 9.7%, nearly double the all-industry average (5.1%). In a survey of 207 food service workers conducted by the Korea Foodservice Industry Research Institute, 74.9% also answered that they were experiencing labor shortages. This is why relying on semi-automatic machines is difficult to sustain long-term across multiple stores.

On the other hand, automatic machines have not been the answer either. First of all, automatic machines that allow pressure control during extraction stages are rare. Espresso machine pumps are generally divided into vibration pumps, rotary pumps, and gear pumps. Most automatic machines released so far use rotary pumps. While they stably produce high pressure and increase the consistency of extraction results, they face limitations in 'variable pressure profiling,' which involves finely shifting pressure step-by-step. In fact, this type of profiling has been considered the territory of expensive semi-automatic machines using gear pumps, such as Slayer or La Marzocco Strada EP. As another example, pre-infusion technology to reduce channeling is hard to find outside of expensive, high-end machines like Thermoplan or Eversys. For these reasons, while consistent, they had the limitation of delivering a somewhat flat flavor profile.

In the end, from the franchise headquarters' standpoint, they were in a position where they had to choose between semi-automatic machines, which are precise but labor-dependent, and automatic machines, which are consistent but flavor-monotonous.

AWARE, as an exceptional fully automatic machine employing a variable pressure gear pump, proposes a solution to this dilemma. By utilizing a gear pump where two gears mesh and rotate, it can draw out a profile that raises or lowers pressure second-by-second. In the early stages, it can apply strong pressure to quickly guide out aromatic flavor compounds, and in the latter half of extraction, it can lower pressure to prevent unwanted bitter or off-flavors from mixing in, allowing for the creation of intricate recipes. Furthermore, unlike other machines that display dashboard-style UIs, it can be designed intuitively in a graph format visible at a glance through a 13-inch touch screen.

(Source: Captured from 'Anstar' YouTube content https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-rT-skItXs)

Temperature and coffee dose, which are critical variables determining coffee taste, can also be controlled in increments of 0.1°C and 0.1g, offering more autonomy. On top of this, the grind size can be micro-adjusted to align with the sensitive density differences unique to light-roasted beans. Recipes created in this way can be saved to the cloud and deployed directly to machines at all branches, establishing a cycle where the machine self-corrects deviations occurring between locations using real-time TDS verification. The flavor designed by headquarters can be replicated at every store without requiring manual intervention.

(The mechanism of the variable pressure pump was covered in more detail in the previous [Aware Insight 01] post.)

• [Aware Insight 01] AWARE's Sensory Design: Expressing Brand Philosophy Through Taste.

In Closing

In the recent specialty trend, establishing a system that replicates high-quality coffee across all branches could serve as a growth momentum for franchise headquarters. Please stay tuned to see how AWARE will transform the market together with franchises.