Bean counting: We get FOUR more coffee shops every day
WE may be known as a nation of teadrinkers – but now it seems Britain’s real love affair is the latte.
In news that will give caffeine lovers quite the buzz, a staggering four new coffee shops opened every day across the UK in 2018 – up from three per day the year before.
This has helped push the value of the booming industry to more than £10.1billion per year, the London Coffee Festival said. But experts warned we will need to train another 40,000 baristas in the next four years to keep up with the current rate that Brits are guzzling flat whites.
They said that although there are already 160,000 baristas working in the UK, there will not be enough to go round the 6,157 shops set to open by 2023.
And by the time an estimated 32,000 coffee shops are open nationwide by 2023, we could be facing a major staffing shortage, the London Coffee Festival and Allegra World Coffee Portal warned.
Jeffrey Young, chief executive of the festival’s founder Allegra Events, said: ‘It’s fantastic to see the industry grow at such an incredible rate.
‘But it’s alarming that the number of baristas joining the profession does not match this growth.
‘Being a barista requires a great deal of knowledge and skill. If we have 200,000 baristas by 2023, there would ten times more baristas in the UK than barristers.’