Hi there, I am a student from Auckland University, New Zealand. I'm doing my graduation project about the Polish consumers' coffee consumption habits. Can you help me to answer some questions?
1. How old are you? ____. May I know your gender: M / F How long have you lived in Poland: ____. Which city of Poland are you from: _____.
2. How often do you usually drink coffee? A. More than once per day B. Every day C. Every Week D. Seldom E. Never
3. How do you usually consume coffee? A. I usually consume instant coffee at home/workplace B. I usually visit café C. I prefer purchase roasted coffee beans and make coffee by coffee machine at home
4. Could you please list 3 to 5 names of cafés that you usually visit?
6. What are your main purposes for visiting cafés? (Multiple selections allowed) A. Hot and Fresh drinks & Chilled beverage B. Food & Meal C. Social gathering with friends and business partners D. Working E. Others: ____________
7. What are your main criteria to select cafés? Please rank the below options according to the level of importance (from the highest to the lowest).
A. Taste and quality of coffee B. The origin of coffee beans C. Taste of food and dessert D. Service quality E. Interior décor and store atmosphere F. Value for money G. Brand awareness H. Location ____________________________________________________
8. The cafés of which location do you usually visit? (Multiple selections allowed) A. Shopping malls B. Business streets C. Bus/train stations D. Residential areas E. Others: _________
9. Artisanal specialist coffee houses provided coffees of high quality, direct-trade coffee beans and a variety of professional brewing way. Are you willing to pay a premium price for an organic and artisanal coffee?
A. Yes, I would like to B. I am not sure but I would like to try C. No, I still prefer chained and specialist cafés
10. What kind of specialist coffee do you prefer? A. Signature blends B. Single origin C. I don't really care it, as long as the taste is good or the price is nice
Poles in general like coffee. They like it strong (the 'Turkish style'). Maybe because they don't know that coffee from a coffee maker is much better ;). I doubt they would pay as much as Starbucks wants their customers to pay, is it close to $5 a cup? Not worth it.
No, Poles don't drink strong coffee but they drink it rather "medium", I would say between American coffee and more southern European (Italy, Spain, France) coffee. I personally cannot drink southern European coffee because too strong and I find the Polish coffee alright.
Coffee drinking is rather new in Poland, which is a tea drinking country. Coffee used to cost a lot in Poland until a few years ago and I remember bringing jars of coffee from abroad to relatives and also giving some to hospital staff.
This is a culinary misnomer. In Poland (maybe in otehr Soviet bloc countreis?) putting a heaping teaspoon of ground coffee into a glass and topping up with boiling water was erroneojusly called "kawa po turecki". Turks and others in that cultural zone brew coffee in long-handled metal pots and allow it to rise several times.
Did you know that in PRL the River Vistula roughly separated the tea-drinking east from the more coffee-consuming west of the country?
Yes, Turks would frown on putting coffee straight into a cup and adding water. They put the coffee into a cezve, add water and heat that over gas. I don't know about letting it rise several times, though. Once was enough in my three-year sojourn in Anatolia. I have a cezve but am too lazy to use it. Two spoons of Nescafe Gold and water from the kettle is as exotic as I get, but the wife always has it Polish Turkish style.
Well, then do you guys think that Poles would love to pay a premium price (such as over 60zl a cup) for specialist coffees (such as coffees of single origin) ?
Absolutely not! Except for a small group of gourmets and snobs. The biggest selling ground coffees in Poland are bottom-shelf Tchibo Family and Prima Finezja -- both mainly or entirely robusta-based.
Poland has room for a yet anotehr good, low-priced robusta-based coffee properly roasted and doctored to remove as much of robusta's rough edge and off-lavours as possible.
Anax, there are a couple of places in Warsaw that sell coffee for that much a cup, however in both of them most menu items are cheaper.
People tend to buy, as Polonius3 says, cheaper brands. One good one for the price is Fort. Very cheap (pretty well the cheapest in the shop) and tastes more expensive than it is.
What about specialist Coffee shops. I found two specialist coffee shops in Poland, which are Columbus and Green Caffe Nero. Do Poles really like to visit these two places? or lower-end places like McCafe?
Neither of those two places are specialist or high end. They're just shopping mall coffee for those that can't be bothered to actually find somewhere respectable.
The world must be coming ot an end if we can actually agree on something. I use Fort to add kick and body to bland Arabica blends. And yes, it's drinkable alone as is.
There's absolutely no way people would pay that in any numbers. Pozegnanie z afryką, an excellent coffee shop in Białystok, sells cafetieres of all kinds of coffee at reasonable prices, and I don't think even Blue Mountain costs that much. OK, Białystok isn't Warsaw, but most Poles know the value of their money.
They use, I think, Civit cats. The cats eat the beans, which are partially digested, and this gives them, ahem, a certain flavour. I've just e-mailed that coffee shop to ask if they'd sell me 25g. I'm intrigued but I'm not prepared to risk the 195PLN they're asking for 50g.
I've just heard from the online shop that they only sell it in 50g packs, so I'll have to wait until I see it in a cafe. I'm not paying 200PLn for something that might taste like sh1t.
Well, I've found on Zomato that, the average cost per capita of Columbus cafe is around 25zl, whereas in Green Caffe Nero and Pozegnanie z afryką the number is 22.5zl and 20zl respectively. What do you guys think of these cafes, especially when compare with mass chained cafes such as McCafe, Starbuck and CoffeeHeaven ? And besides, which city, or cities, do you think has the strongest coffee/cafe culture or potentials for cafe business? Warsaw, Wroclaw, Poznan, etc.
Columbus is a mass chain, so is Nero. I'm not sure where you're getting your information from.
Anyway, Poznań has the strongest cafe culture in Poland. Wrocław is non-existent (much more orientated around beer, the Lwowian coffee culture simply didn't take hold...), though Warsaw would be a strong second.
Did you know that in PRL the River Vistula roughly separated the tea-drinking east from the more coffee-consuming west of the country?
that's ******** Polonius - I grew up drinking tea and it was in Opole area - drinking coffee was present but coffee was very particular and was never the main drink for my parents
As I ntoed, the Vistula thing was a very rough approximation. Besides, back then coffee was not just another beverage to wash food down with, it was a kind of upper-end experience or social event. Especially as regards frequenting a kawiarnia (café) which had a certain mystique about it.
For breakfast, those that didn't drink tea usually chose white ersatz coffee (kawa zbożowa) made from roasted grain and chicory. It contained no caffein so even little kids could drink it.
correction of typo: noted
tastes more expensive
I forgot to mention Sahara brand. Just a tad pricier than Fort but reminds one of a southern European roast.
There are no "premium" cafe brands. There are expensive cafes, sure, but no chains apart from the medicore Starbucks and others. Also, the cafe culture isn't all over Poland. Wrocław for instance has a very, very poor cafe culture compared to Poznań, while it's almost non-existent in Szczecin.
So, what kind of price are Poles willing to pay for a cup of artisanal coffee in a cafe?
Depends on the cafe and the city. There are no rules, due to the lack of a common cafe culture. This isn't the Balkans, Vienna or L'viv.
