Specialty Coffee Trends Post-Lockdown in the United Arab Emirates

Corresponding Author: Kurniawan Arif Maspul, kurniawan.arif@iou-students.com

Citation: Maspul, K.A. (2021). Specialty Coffee Trends Post-Lockdown in the United Arab Emirates. Academia Letters, Article 3185. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL3185

The vast number of specialty coffee shops in the United Arab Emirates continues to grow into an emerging business that appears like mushrooms in the rainy season. This can be seen from the proliferation of specialty coffee shops with contemporary concepts in the last three years. Moreover, the United Arab Emirates market consumption of coffee commodities is quite prominent globally, making the United Arab Emirates a global hub specialty coffee trend market (M Al Ghali et al., 2017). The bustling specialty coffee trend in the United Arab Emirates is enough to give great attention to local people and ex-pats. The introduction of various kinds of specialty coffee products is even in great demand by the public, and it is almost a daily habit for residents to always visit the café from morning to late at night, especially amid the hectic generation of millennials who are the market for the rapid development of this specialty coffee (Anggreni et al., 2021; Wang et al., 2017).

Meanwhile, everything changed when the pandemic came; it forcibly altered the trend of the specialty coffee business from the end of 2019 until now drastically (Maspul, 2020a). It is estimated that coffee shop business owners will increasingly compete for customers by serving quality coffee drinks, affordable prices and more straightforward outlet concepts. This causes the demand and consumption of coffee from upstream to downstream to decline. From the upstream side, demand for Arabica coffee has decreased in terms of imports of green coffee and the local trade itself on the downstream level (Al-Fadly, 2020; Maspul, 2020a).

The global pandemic also changed consumer behaviour habits to stay at home and work from home – WFH (Chauhan & Shah, 2020; Maryati, 2020). The impact also changes people's habits of enjoying coffee in shops or cafes so that downstream businesses are hit where people are visiting less and less. The café is no longer called a meeting point or work location during the pandemic and large-scale social restrictions until June 2020 (Maspul, 2020a). In addition, with the current economic conditions, consumers tend to spend their money on primary needs compared to non-premier needs. So there is a shift in consumer coffee consumption from high-class cafes to homes, where coffee needs remain an immediate need for some people who need daily caffeine (Al-Fadly, 2020; Maspul, 2020a).

This also causes coffee shop owners to bear high operational costs. Therefore, coffee entrepreneurs are now starting to think about offering their products at more affordable prices. On the other hand, middle-class shops are beginning to seriously improve quality. So that in the future, people will prefer premium coffee at a reasonable price (Al-Fadly, 2020; Maspul, 2020a). While the coffee business at the primary level with a small shop with a grab and go concept is still in demand as long as it makes adjustments, diversifies products and pays attention to protocols from health issues (Al-Fadly, 2020; Maspul, 2020a). A small coffee business with a simple and unpretentious concept is not worried about the competition in the coffee business in the future. Including the emergence of many coffee roasteries in the United Arab Emirates in the production segment in medium and large. Where, of course, with many competitors, the better for the coffee business ecosystem, especially in specialty coffee. Moreover, consumer preferences in the coffee business are also determined by the taste and number of single origins offered, so that quality has an essential role in product sales (Maspul, 2020b).

Furthermore, because in the post-lockdown period, it turns out that the market's interest in consumer behaviour has not been closed to the development of specialty coffee in the United Arab Emirates and continues to grow with the number of educations that are becoming a trend for coffee specialists (Maspul, 2020a). Coupled with online digital sales offerings that are increasingly crowded at the end of 2020, the emergence of BeanBurds and several of its competitors who are specialty coffee retailers that offer specialty coffee sales from local roasteries in the United Arab Emirates. Specialty coffee has also experienced a shift to the convenience of enjoying specialty coffee through instant coffee produced from several local coffee roasteries, making it easier for consumers to enjoy specialty coffee without buying expensive coffee accessories for individual consumption. Then with the convenience of the digital market, sales of both supplements and roasted specialty coffee are easier to reach with many express couriers that match not only in the United Arab Emirates but also to the Gulf Cooperation Council market (Begum et al., 2020; Franzolini, 2020).

Therefore, E-commerce has become the concept of digitizing the product market for specialty coffee in the past year, has seen an increase in sales from several coffee roasteries that have successfully adapted well to the pandemic conditions of their business structure. Besides that, it is also a trend for consumer behaviour for coffee specialists who are influencers from millennials and freelance marketing promoting specialty coffee retail from many local coffee roasteries in the United Arab Emirates. This is not far from the help of social media, which has strengthened the local coffee roastery brand in enhancing resilience at the economic level after the lockdown and the fall in the specialty coffee market retail in the previous year. The ease of service in delivering orders directly is also getting busier with the emergence of food deliverymen such as Noon food, strengthening previous brand competitors such as Talabat and Deliveroo (Almansour et al., 2020; Franzolini, 2020; Hwang et al., 2020).

The event created a massive momentum that brought together regional and international coffee specialists. In addition, coupled with the World Brewers Cup Championship held in February 2021 at the Gulfood Dubai event, it has brought back the spirit of the coffee lover community to continue developing progress in the introduction of specialty coffee from farm to cup. Again, this trend strengthens this trend as one of the commodities in demand globally during the pandemic (Li & Sakamoto, 2021; Maspul, 2020a).

Closing Remarks

Pandemic is not only a disaster of outbreaks around the world and how many businesses in the world economy have struggled, the same in the United Arab Emirates. the strength of its society in making this pandemic a lesson not only to sleep with but to strengthen themselves to live with it. This is also the case for specialty coffee commodities in the United Arab Emirates, where both players and the market remain connected in building resilience in a healthy economy. Of course, the United Arab Emirates government's support providing opportunities and development of all business sector land, including specialty coffee commodities.

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