<Anchor> It
is a friendly economy time.
Today (10th) I will be with reporter Kwon Ae-ri.
It seems that Korean people really like coffee.
There are now far more coffee shops than there are tolerable restaurants.
<Reporter>
Anchor, what comes to mind when you think of Korean soul food?
<Anchor>
Soul food?
Tteokbokki, kimchi stew, soybean paste stew, and bulgogi, aren't they?
[Reporter
] That's right.
When I think of home food, I think of soybean paste stew, kimchi stew, and ramen, and when eating out, chicken, tteokbokki, and jajangmyeon come to mind.
Now, if you look at what the numbers are saying, a cup of coffee after eating these foods is what Koreans love right now.
The number of beverage shops, including coffee shops, is rapidly increasing, and as of the end of last year, it was found that there were close to 100,000 shops.
It is not an exaggeration to say that virtually all stores offering beverages are coffee stores, considering the tendency of domestic beverage stores to have one or two types of coffee on their menus, even at beverage stores that do not focus on coffee.
Korean restaurants are overwhelmingly the most popular, but right next to them is coffee, and the only popular dining item that can be said to be close to a coffee shop is a chicken restaurant.
It passed 80,000.
And even if you include a snack bar selling tteokbokki and a Chinese restaurant serving jajangmyeon, the scale is less than 70% of that of a coffee house.
Bars are only about half of coffee shops.
<Anchor>
By the way, Reporter Kwon, the saying that our coffee industry is now saturated seems to have come up quite a bit a few years ago, but is it still growing so fast?
<Reporter>
Yes.
That's the amazing thing.
If you think about it, especially in the city center or on a busy street, every two or three houses are coffee houses.
I want all these houses to be commercial, but they are being maintained.
Even after the corona crisis started, the closure of the coffee house stopped at the level of decreasing or slightly increasing than before.
Almost the same as before.
Entrepreneurship, on the other hand, is so much more that it continues to grow unabated despite being the fastest-growing sector in the restaurant industry over the past decade.
Coffee is made by importing coffee beans, so it becomes clearer how much coffee we drink when we look at the amount of imports. When the statistics for December come out, last year's imports are expected to break the all-time record again.
It is highly likely to break through 200,000 tons for the first time.
What is noteworthy is that, excluding December of last year, annual revenues in terms of money approached $1.2 billion.
This is a whopping increase of over 45% over 2021.
The actual coffee imports have not increased so much all at once as you saw earlier, but it is largely because of the soaring international price of beans since the end of 2021.
In addition, considering the strong dollar last year, the actual burden of coffee bean prices felt by Koreans was much greater.
However, imports continued to increase as you saw earlier.
Even though it is a favorite food that can be reduced if it becomes expensive, the soaring price has not yet had a significant impact on the rapid increase in consumption.
<Anchor>
So, there are a lot of Koreans drinking coffee now, so it may be that coffee shops are increasing, but there seems to be some other special reason.
what else is there?
<Reporter>
Looking at the recent situation alone, it is analyzed that it was a business that could be less affected by the corona crisis.
I was able to mingle with people and even though I couldn’t eat comfortably, I was able to have coffee takeout.
I drink while taking a walk outside or bring it into the office, so when I listen to the stories of coffee shop owners, they even say that switching to takeout is more convenient and beneficial from a business standpoint.
Other popular eat-out items, other than coffee, contrasted with more closures last year or just barely maintaining scale.
But it would be difficult to explain with just that.
There may be many reasons why they drink, but it is probably because Koreans are so tired.
In the past, when a job portal conducted a survey on why people drink coffee, the number one reason was to wake up.
The reason why I find toxic coffee among many drinks is that I have to drink and work.
Koreans' working hours have decreased by more than 10% over the past 10 years, but we still work over 200 hours more per year than the OECD average.
The government's working hour improvement plan, which allows more time to work at once, will be announced next month.
It can be said that it is an issue that needs to be promoted in a very meticulous manner by carefully examining the situation by industry and workplace so that there is no place where unnecessary burdens are placed again while being efficient.