Coffee and Tea Foodservice Trends in the U.S.

Coffee and Tea Foodservice Trends in the U.S. provides industry participants with essential guidance on trends including menu pricing and discounting; coffee commodity pricing trends; promotional activity & strategy; flavor innovation; coffee and tea foodservice health trends; and retail coffee and tea brands used in foodservice.

Coffee and tea remains a key foodservice industry growth driver, buoyed by aggressive menu innovation and platform expansion, a strong foothold in the breakfast daypart, consumer lifestyle needs, and some of the lowest price points in an industry battling a down economy.

Led by Starbucks and Dunkin' Donuts, coffee and tea players continue to outperform restaurant industry growth, with revenue growth extending across restaurant segments. Coffee and Tea Foodservice Trends in the U.S. tracks coffee and tea growth not only among specialists but among restaurant brands pursuing incremental profits through improvements in coffee and tea quality and variety.

This report will help industry participants:

• Stay on trend, with menu analysis that includes trending of coffee & tea varieties, flavors and types by restaurant segment.

• Learn from innovation and category leaders via coffee and tea foodservice innovator case studies on the following brands: Argo Tea, Café Luxxe, Camille’s Sidewalk Café, Caribou, Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf, Dunkin' Donuts, Intelligensia Coffee & Tea, Java Dave’s, La Madeleine, Peet’s, Starbucks, Tea Station, Tim Hortons and Tully’s. Coverage also includes major QSR brands, such as McDonald’s, Burger King and Wendy’s.

• Gauge coffee-centric restaurants’ brand performance against their strategy decisions via trending of guest traffic, same-store sales, and guest check averages among leading brands.

• Keep ahead of consumer coffee and tea foodservice drinking trends, with analysis by flavor and type of coffee and tea, daypart usage, and penetration by segment.

• Get direction on industry revenue growth, with a foodservice market size and forecast for coffee and tea, including context for selected foodservice segments (including convenience stores, snack and beverage concepts, and fast food/QSR restaurants).

Scope of Report

This report examines foodservice coffee and tea trends in the United States, focusing on coffee and tea sold at foodservice venues. A majority of coffee and tea foodservice sales are “by the cup,” but many foodservice locations also provide packaged ready-to-drink (RTD) options, as well as options to be prepared by the consumer at another location.

Foodservice channels include snack and beverage restaurants (including coffeehouses, donut shops and teahouses), limited-service restaurants (including QSR and fast casual restaurants), and full-service restaurants (including family, casual and fine dining restaurants). Other channels--such as bars/taverns, cafeteria, hotel foodservice and food trucks--are also covered by the analysis.

For the purposes of this report, foodservice sales refer to prepared tea and coffee intended for immediate consumption, such as a cup of brewed tea or tea, a dispensed glass of iced tea or iced coffee, or a single RTD container. Any packaged product—such as a tin of leaves, a bag of ground coffee or a multi-pack of RTD bottles—sold through a foodservice establishment is considered a retail sale for market sizing purposes.

Report Methodology

The information contained in this report was obtained from primary and secondary research. Primary research entailed consultations with beverage market sources, on-site examination of retail venues, and fielding a proprietary Packaged Facts online consumer survey focusing on beverage product shopper insights. Menu item data is provided in part by Datassential, a leading foodservice research company. We highlight content from its MenuTrends product, which has the widest coverage of restaurants on the market. Secondary research included extensive Internet canvassing and research- and data-gathering from relevant consumer business and trade publications; company reports including annual reports, press releases, and investor conference calls; company profiles in trade and consumer publications; government reports; and other food and beverage market reports by Packaged Facts.

Our consumer analysis draws primarily on two data sources. The first is national consumer survey data from Experian Simmons in its Summer 2011 National Consumer Study, as well as previous-year Experian Simmons surveys. The discussion of consumer patterns also draws on proprietary Packaged Facts online consumer surveys, including a May/June 2011 survey based on 2,000 U.S. adults (including 1,539 coffee drinkers and 1,453 tea drinkers) who in aggregate are census representative on the primary demographic measure of age, gender, geographic region, race/ethnicity, and presence of children in the household.