A BILLION £s' WORTH OF CUPPAS

Abstract

The hot beverage market, made up of tea, ground and instant coffee, cocoa and drinking chocolate, and malted food drinks, exceeded £1 billion in 1984. Tea and coffee are worth about the same, just under £500m each, but tea is still the nation's most popular drink. Each Briton consumes six cups of hot drinks a day and just under four cups are tea. Tea outranks coffee in cups drunk by over 2 to 1, and 215,000 tons of tea are imbibed each year. ‘Hot Beverages in the UK’ is the second in the Drink Market Updates series by the Market Information Service at the Leatherhead Food Research Association. This report gives information on market shares, market sizes, consumption patterns and future trends in instant and ground coffee, packet tea and tea bags, and food drinks. The hot beverage market is expanding only in a few specialised areas, in particular, ground coffee, premium instant coffee and speciality teas. Currently worth only £168m between them, they are unlikely to make a great impact on the total market for some time.