Challenges Café Coffee Day Must Be Prepared to Take on, as a Host of International Consumer Food/retail Brands Enter the Indian Market

Challenges Café Coffee Day must be prepared to take on, as a host of international consumer food/retail brands enter the Indian market.

22nd July '11.

Café coffee day Ltd. with 1116 cafés across the world today and more than 3 lakh people visiting their cafes every day, currently holds majority of the market share in the food/beverage retail segment in India. Besides this, the company has 1,000 kiosks, branded Coffee Day Express. It has 15,000 vending machines in around 4,000 companies, also sells roasted filter coffee powder and is a part of India's largest coffee conglomerate, The Amalgamated Bean Coffee Trading Company.

The café coffee day chain in India has been the buzz and talk among majority of the county's youth soon after they opened their first café in 1996 on Brigade Road, Bangalore. With the company's recent brand makeover, the café coffee day brand is presented to be more youth-full, fresh, young and new.

In very recent times, with the rapidly growing Indian consumer market, giant international food/beverage retail outlet brands such as U.S based Starbucks & Dunkin' Donuts, London's coffee republic, Australia's Coffee Club and France's Alto Coffee are bracing themselves to penetrate into this market in a big way. Some international coffee chains like the U.K.'s Costa Coffee and Gloria Jean's of Australia have already got a foothold in India and are beginning to expand posing as big competition to Café Coffee Day.

The company's tagline 'a lot can happen over coffee' also clearly explains why a high percentage of India's upper middle class population spends significant time in cafés around their city. Until the mid-1990s, coffee consumption in India stagnated at 55,000 tons annually. It has doubled since then because of the growing café culture in our country introduced primarily by Café Coffee Day itself. Unlike other markets, India's coffee market still has plenty of room to grow that is attracting these international coffee brands to set up in our county.

Seattle-based Starbucks recently completed an agreement with Tata Coffee, in January this year to source and roast coffee from the Indian company and to set up retail stores in partnership with them. Dunkin' Donuts, too, will partner with an Indian company- Jubilant FoodWorks, which also operates the Domino's Pizza chain in India. The entry of these company's into the Indian market was delayed as it is Indian policy that prohibits 100% foreign ownership of a single-brand retail outlet. However now it is a matter of time that they set up in India and become prime competition for Café Coffee Day in addition to its already established local competition such as Barista, Mc Cafes etc.

Café Coffee Day is India's largest coffee chain and holds strong footholds in the Indian coffee market and in the local consumers mindset. For the simple reason, that café coffee day serves up coffee brewed from coffee beans plucked from their very own plantations spread over 10,000 acres in the hills of the western ghats makes the whole coffee experience personalized for an Indian consumer.

As of today, especially after the rebranding of Café Coffee Day, the cafes are the preferred one-stop coffee destination among the youth of our country. In an emerging country such as India, café coffee day has also managed to price their products reasonably and make them affordable to cater to the masses in India.

With cafes set up at the most happening, bustling & prime locations in India, a huge vendor network, a fan base on facebook of more than a half a million, Café Coffee Day stands out as India's most preferred café at present.

Café coffee day has the advantage of being present in the ever-expanding India coffee market for the past 15 years, which will always give the coffee company an edge as it is well aware and experienced with all the Indian coffee market trends throughout.

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