Starbucks and getting lucky....

Korea is the 13th largest coffee drinking country in the world and it imports over 1% of the world’s coffee beans. Coffee was primarily introduced to Korea by the United States military. Unfortunately, the “coffee” that was introduced was instant, powdered coffee and this still makes up some 90 percent of total coffee consumption in Korea. This stuff tastes, to use a strong word, crap. In 1999 the international expansion of Starbucks to Korea first brought espresso-based coffee to Korea. In fact, a ‘regular’ cup of coffee (Americano) is brewed by first creating an espresso and then watering it down with hot mineral water.

Good coffee is primarily a ‘youth’ phenomenon. As Baek notes (2003), “many (people) especially those who are over 40, said that they prefer the flavor of instant coffee to freshly brewed.” Among these younger customers, the majority are white collar women, who, at Starbucks, outnumber men by 150%. This may be a function of Starbucks initial marketing efforts, which were primarily aimed at college students, women, and Koreans with international experience. One surprising statistical outcome of this is that while men drink almost 50% more coffee than women, women spend more money on coffee as they prefer to purchase their coffee at ‘take out” locations such as Starbucks. In 2007, the Korea Health Industry Development Institute released a study which showed that Korean men and women consumed equivalent amounts of social staples such as rice, ramen and pork, but that men tended to consume a large portion of their remaining calories in soju, while women did so in coffee (the average coffee mix in Korea has about 55 calories in sugar and flavorings).

Starbucks is not just a coffee shop but, also, a social phenomenon. Here again, this follows partly from the “brand” that Starbucks has created: Stores are constructed for social utility (the decision to build stores with this layout actually precipitated the departure of one of Starbucks’ original founders as he preferred to focus on coffee and not the “watering hole” nature of the new Starbucks). But this social construction is also uniquely Korean, and an international aficionado of Starbucks will quickly recognize that Korean stores have more wooden chairs and tables than sofas and coffee tables. This is a conscious design decision to maximize the amount of people who can fit into a given space and it closely follows the model that Koreans were already familiar with in their tea-houses.

And if you walk into a Starbucks in Korea, you see the remarkable demographic I mentioned above. There will be table after table of women. Sprinkled amongst them will be a couple or two, and if a single male is in a Starbucks, it is a decent chance that this will be a non-Korean male. I think I've only seen a group of males in a Starbucks, once.

Which, of course, means that this should be a great place to pick up chicks! Just sit in there with your laptop, exuding confidence, testosterone, and the faint scent of last night's soju and you should pull chicks like crazy. ;-) Not that this matters to me, as I have given my heart and Seoul to the OAF (as well as that left testicle she keeps in the vise, and the right - one that she has hung on her mantelpiece).

Actually, there seems to be a certain bifurcation between what might be called “traditional” Korean coffee houses and what might be characterized as “global” (i.e. Starbucks, LavAzza, and other international joints). When I’m in the traditional ones the sex ratio seems closer to general reality, but in the Starbucks it’s all about the frails (Sorry, but in my culture class I did a little “history of rock n’ roll” and it included explaining the differences between Jazz and Blues – “Minnie the Moocher” happened to pop up in this, and now I’m all about the guys and dolls). That the picture to the right is of a "traditional" coffee house and although the only person in sight is a female, I often see couples in there. This place also serves a decent red wine by the glass and offers free wi-fi, so it is one of my favorite stops in Daejeon.

Again, single guys take note.

PS.. a lot of this analysis is from Bak, "From Strange Bitter Concoction to Romantic Necessity: The Social History of Coffee Drinking in South Korea" which I picked up from a link at the Metropolitician.