India Coffee Culture Brewing as Tea Holds Ground

 　　India is traditionally a tea-drinking country.  But it is now acquiring a taste for coffee, prompting global coffee chains to eye the huge market.  And local entrepreneurs are also hoping to cash in on the country’s tea-drinking habits by opening new outlets¹ to promote the beverage².

　　It is just 10:30 in the morning, but two cafés located within meters of each other, opposite a college in New Delhi, are doing brisk business.  Their main customers - undergraduate students.

　　In the past decade, India’s huge young population has quickly embraced a coffee culture as cafés become the hip³ and convenient place to spend time.

　　The result - coffee chains have expanded fast and furiously, fanning out from big metros⁴ like New Delhi and Mumbai to small towns and highways.

　　Coffee consumption has doubled in the last 10 years.

　　It is the promise of this market that is luring⁵ chains like American-based Starbucks to enter India. It will open its first outlets here, later this year. In addition to domestic chains, Lavazza and Costa Coffee are already present.

　　The head of India Coffee Trust, Anil Kumar Bhandari, says Starbucks will come to a country where cafés have become central to the lifestyle of young, middle-class Indians as incomes grow and global trends catch on.

　　“They should have been here before...  Almost any café chain which has a reasonable quality with its service, ambiance and food, and coffee first, will succeed in this country.  Because look at the young population, [it] is growing and they are all taking to it like ducks to water,” Bhandari said.

　　But coffee’s growing popularity does not mean that tea, which Indians have consumed for more than 150 years, is moving over.

　　India is one of the world’s major tea-growing countries and a cup of “chai,” as it is known locally, is hugely popular. Indians consume eight times more tea than coffee.

　　But outside homes and offices, it is mostly sold by street vendors⁶. And that is what entrepreneurs like Amuleek Singh Bijral hope to change.  The 36-year-old Harvard graduate has opened a tea retail⁷ chain in the southern information technology hub, Bangalore, called Chai Point.  These are not upscale cafes, but offer customers more affordable⁸ tea in what Bijral calls a clean and hygienic environment.

　　Instead of cappuccinos, lattés and espressos, they sell lemon tea, iced green tea or masala chai - tea cooked with spices.  It is often served in glasses instead of cups, the way many Indians have it at home.

　　In less than a year, 14 Chai Points have mushroomed in the city.  They are not competing for image with cafés because, as Bijral points out, “chai” is the common man’s beverage.

　　“You can not [over] price it.  You can not give it an elitist twist.  We are very clearly not a high-street phenomenon.  We are not a mall phenomenon," Bijral noted⁹. "We do not think that is the mass of India, so we very clearly have defined our sweet spot where we say we are going to target the working Indian and serve people who are in the habit of drinking 'chai' three to four times a day.”

　　Another entrepreneur has launched a similar tea venture in the northern city, Jaipur. Thirty-year-old Manasi Chadha in Bangalore welcomes these outlets.

　　“Drinking tea is a kind of in-home kind of thing, out-of-home options like this are new.  Especially since coffee-drinking has boomed in the last couple of years," Chadha said. "This is a little different.”

　　And as health becomes high on the agenda of many consumers, the tea restaurants hope to quietly stress the advantage of a beverage that is low on caffeine and high on antioxidants.

　　Business analysts¹⁰ say it is not a case of coffee or tea.  They say that in a country where half the billion-plus population is under 25, both cafés and tea points will find plenty of room to grow.

1 outlets   

n.出口( outlet的名词复数 )；经销店；插座；廉价经销店

参考例句：

• The dumping of foreign cotton blocked outlets for locally grown cotton. 外国棉花的倾销阻滞了当地生产的棉花的销路。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• They must find outlets for their products. 他们必须为自己的产品寻找出路。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》

2 beverage   

n.(水，酒等之外的)饮料

参考例句：

• The beverage is often colored with caramel.这种饮料常用焦糖染色。
• Beer is a beverage of the remotest time.啤酒是一种最古老的饮料。

3 hip   

n.臀部，髋；屋脊

参考例句：

• The thigh bone is connected to the hip bone.股骨连着髋骨。
• The new coats blouse gracefully above the hip line.新外套在臀围线上优美地打着褶皱。

4 metros   

n.地下铁路( metro的名词复数 )；（尤指）巴黎地铁

参考例句：

• The map says the highest peak in this vicinity is 1500 metros. 地图显示附近最高点是1500米。 来自互联网
• Cuando estaba en el equipo de atletismo, siempre corría 400 metros. 我在田径队时，总是跑400米。 来自互联网

5 luring   

吸引，引诱（lure的现在分词形式）

参考例句：

• Cheese is very good for luring a mouse into a trap. 奶酪是引诱老鼠上钩的极好的东西。
• Her training warned her of peril and of the wrong, subtle, mysterious, luring. 她的教养警告她：有危险，要出错儿，这是微妙、神秘而又诱人的。

6 vendors   

n.摊贩( vendor的名词复数 )；小贩；（房屋等的）卖主；卖方

参考例句：

• The vendors were gazundered at the last minute. 卖主在最后一刻被要求降低房价。
• At the same time, interface standards also benefIt'software vendors. 同时，界面标准也有利于软件开发商。 来自About Face 3交互设计精髓

7 retail   

v./n.零售；adv.以零售价格

参考例句：

• In this shop they retail tobacco and sweets.这家铺子零售香烟和糖果。
• These shoes retail at 10 yuan a pair.这些鞋子零卖10元一双。

8 affordable   

adj.支付得起的，不太昂贵的

参考例句：

• The rent for the four-roomed house is affordable.四居室房屋的房租付得起。
• There are few affordable apartments in big cities.在大城市中没有几所公寓是便宜的。

9 noted   

adj.著名的，知名的

参考例句：

• The local hotel is noted for its good table.当地的那家酒店以餐食精美而著称。
• Jim is noted for arriving late for work.吉姆上班迟到出了名。

10 analysts   

分析家，化验员( analyst的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• City analysts forecast huge profits this year. 伦敦金融分析家预测今年的利润非常丰厚。
• I was impressed by the high calibre of the researchers and analysts. 研究人员和分析人员的高素质给我留下了深刻印象。