Myanmar coffee scene fuelled by middle class caffeine high
Behind a wooden counter in downtown Yangon’s Coffee Club, the unmistakable hiss of a barista steaming milk briefly drowns out a funky soundtrack piped through a store filled with students glued to their smartphones. In any other Asian capital it would be a ubiquitous sight. But in Yangon, this is something new. Long absent from the region’s booming cafe culture, Myanmar’s commercial capital is now witnessing a surge in swish coffee bars providing an alternative to the treacly instant coffee served by thousands of street carts.
It is a trend that points both to the changing tastes of Myanmar’s emerging middle-class but also the widening gap between them and the nation’s poor. Nyi Nyi Tun, a doctor, is typical of the newly aspirant customers relishing consumer goods that were either far beyond their reach or simply unavailable under Myanmar’s brutal and economically incompetent military dictatorship. “I came here to read,”he said, sipping an americano and perusing the web on a tablet. “With friends, a streetside tea shop is better. But if you want to be somewhere alone and quiet, then this kind of coffee shop is good.”To escape the noisy onslaught of Yangon’s increasingly vehicle-clogged streets, Nyi Nyi Tun is willing to fork out as much as $2 — ten times what a traditional Myanmar coffee made from pre-mixed sachets and condensed milk costs at roadside stalls.
‘Exponential growth’
In the last few years since the end of outright military rule in 2011, around two dozen specialty coffee shops have opened up in Yangon alone.“You will witness exponential growth of the coffee industry in the next three years,”predicts Ye Naing Wynn, managing director of the Nervin Cafe chain-Myanmar’s oldest-which now boasts five outlets including in Mandalay and the capital Naypyidaw.“A country like Myanmar has newly opened up. People have been closed up for so many years. The natural human reaction is they want to experience new things,”he adds.
Initially it was the large influx of expats and tourists that helped foster Yangon’s nascent coffee scene. But owners say locals now make up the majority of drinkers. “That’s my target audience going forward to be honest... because any food and beverage business that relies 70 percent on locals ought to do well in the long run,”says Thura Ko Ko, who returned to Myanmar from overseas four years ago and opened The Coffee Club above another of his businesses-a mobile phone shop.
It helps, he adds, that specialty coffee is seen as something aspirational and trendy.“Sometimes I sit in and I overhear some new local customers try and they’re not quite sure what a cappuccino is-but they’ve seen it (on) the TV, they’ve seen it online and that’s been a big influence in lifestyle as well. Everything from Korean soaps to films,”he says.
Out of reach
The economic potential of Myanmar’s growing middle class is not lost on international companies who are scrambling to access one of Asia’s last untapped markets. In 2013 Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz hinted during a trip to Thailand that he was eyeing Myanmar while Carlsberg is also hoping to break into the beer market-an area currently monopolized by the country’s military. Management consulting giant McKinsey believes up to a quarter of Myanmar’s population could be living in large cities by 2030 — up from 13 percent in 2010 — while the economy, if managed properly, could quadruple from $45 billion in 2010 to $200 billion by 2030.
“The size of the urban middle class is expected to double over the next decade, with annual double-digit growth in middle class incomes over the next five years,” says Rajiv Biswas, Asia-Pacific chief economist at IHS.“This will generate very rapid growth in urban consumer demand for retail goods, including consumer durables such as autos, motorcycles, refrigerators and air conditioners, consumer electronics such as mobile telephones and tablets, and basic consumer goods such as food and beverages,”he adds.
But Sean Turnell, an expert on Myanmar’s economy at Macquarie University in Australia, warns against overhyping the potential of the middle class in a country where the vast majority of its 60 million population are the rural poor.“Serious consumption usually starts for people with disposable incomes above around $5,000. There would be few in Myanmar with this sort of spending power,”he says. However much buzz is created by the opening of the next hip coffee joint, for people like Ko Phyo, who runs a photography shop in Yangon, a latte will likely remain far outside his budget.“It’s too expensive for ordinary people,” the 33-year-old says while sipping a sweet brew in one of Yangon’s many traditional, cheaper teashops. “It’s ten times more expensive in those places. Only the middle classes can afford that.”—AFP
The daughter of late singer Whitney Houston was pulled unconscious from her bathtub Saturday at her Georgia home, in an eerie echo of her mother’s tragic death three years ago. Bobbi Kristina Brown, 21, was found by her husband and a friend at her home in Roswell, roughly 22 miles (35 kilometers) north of Atlanta, Roswell Police Department spokeswoman Lisa Holland said.
“She is still alive and breathing and other than that I do not know her condition at this time,” Holland told a news conference. “Investigators are on the scene at the hospital and the house.”The TMZ.com entertainment news website said Brown’s husband Nick Gordon and a friend had performed CPR at the scene after making the discovery. Emergency services were called to assist before Brown was whisked to North Fulton Hospital for treatment. TMZ reported that sources close to the family said Bobbi Kristina had been placed in a medically induced coma to address swelling on the brain.
Soul diva Whitney Houston died in February 2012 when she was found in a bathtub at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Los Angeles on the eve of the music industry’s annual Grammy Awards show. Coroners concluded she died by accidental drowning, with cocaine use and heart disease as contributing factors. Various bottles were found in the singer’s hotel room-in all some 12 medications prescribed by five different doctors, including anxiety treatment Xanax and the potent corticosteroid Prednisone, the report said.
The singer of hits such as “I Will Always Love You” sold more than 170 million records during a nearly three-decade career, but also fought a long battle against substance abuse.
The singer left all of her assets to Bobbi Kristina-born from her troubled marriage to singer Bobby Brown-while excluding her ex-husband. —AFP