Demand is shifting east. The USDA's January 2026 GAIN report puts the Chinese coffee market at 42 billion dollars in 2024. Consumption there exceeds 240,000 tonnes, or about 4 million bags.

The level matters less than the slope. This consumption has grown by nearly 150% in ten years, and expected growth is around 15% a year. China imported about 3 million bags of green coffee in the marketing year that closed in September 2025. Luckin operated the largest network of cafés there in 2024.

China accounted for 28.7% of the Asia-Pacific market in 2025. That region is the leading source of global growth, and for a precise reason: coffee is winning over populations that used to drink tea, in India as in Southeast Asia. These are not shares taken from a competitor, they are new drinkers.

Vietnam shows both ends of the movement. It exported a record 8.92 billion dollars' worth in 2025, and it also consumes 5 million bags itself. A producing country becomes a drinking country too.

Specialty coffee, for its part, is hard to measure. Its definition changed on November 5, 2024: it no longer rests on the single threshold of 80 points, but on the SCA's Coffee Value Assessment, a broader evaluation than a pass mark.

And no independent market share exists for this category. The 111 billion dollars seen circulating for 2025 come from commercial firms, whose scopes include capsules and instant coffees. The figure therefore measures something other than what its name announces.

USDA FAS GAIN, “China: Brewing Momentum”, Jan. 2026, fas.usda.gov; Mordor Intelligence, Asia-Pacific coffee market, 2025; Perfect Daily Grind, Feb. 2, 2026; SCA, CVA standards, Nov. 5, 2024 (LC ch. 18)

Coffee without the coffee plant exists in two forms that must not be confused, because they do not raise the same questions.

The first assembles roasted plant material, without a single coffee cell. Atomo, founded in Seattle in 2019, blends date pits, ramon and sunflower seeds, guava and chicory. The caffeine is recovered from decaffeinated tea, that is, from a by-product of making caffeine-free tea.

The company raised 40 million dollars in 2022, received an investment from Suntory in 2023 and aimed for 500 cafés in 2024. Its argument is environmental: 93% fewer emissions and 94% less water than conventional coffee, by its own figures.

Voyage Foods follows the same path with other materials: roasted chickpeas and rice hulls. Its argument is not the climate but the price, 40% lower than that of coffee. It sells only to foodservice and industry.

These products imitate a bean, they do not replace one.

The second form is of a different nature. It grows real Coffea arabica cells in a bioreactor, that is, in a tank where the cells multiply in a nutrient medium, with no tree or plantation.

VTT, in Finland, produced a first cup from it in September 2021 and in 2026 is working on pilot tanks of 1,000 liters. Pluri, in Israel, patented a 3D bioreactor in 2024.

Three absences show where this route stands. In May 2026, no cellular coffee had regulatory authorization, in any market. No production cost had been published. And no major food group had committed to it, unlike cocoa, on which several have already positioned themselves.

The fundamental limit remains. A process that produces an aroma in a tank produces neither the diversity of a forest nor the income of 125 million people.

Food Dive, Dec. 12, 2023, fooddive.com (Atomo); Green Queen / Vegconomist 2025 (Voyage Foods); VTT, press release Sept. 2021, vttresearch.com; FoodNavigator, “Cultivated coffee: does it have a future?”, May 27, 2026