Starbucks confident of success in tea-drinking China
Following strong quarterly results, Starbucks reaffirmed its commitment to expand aggressively in tea-drinking countries like China. Despite tea being deeply embedded in many Asian countries, the coffee giant posted a 30% revenue growth in the Asia-Pacific region and very strong sales volumes in China, where it has been expanding in second-tier cities such as Dalian and Hangzhou. Starbucks will open its thousandth store in China later on this year and the Asian country is set overtake Canada to become its second-largest market in 2014. According to Euromonitor, overall coffee sales grew 10% in China over the last 5 years, well ahead of neighboring big markets and global growth average. That said, coffee maintains less than 1% of the countrys hot-drink market share, whereas tea has 54%.