Coffee

Sales of coffee perked up during the past year as more shoppers got into another habit — brewing coffee at home. Although many have reduced the frequency of trips to Starbucks, Dunkin' Donuts and other ready-to-drink coffee purveyors, they're still enjoying their favorite cup of Joe by brewing bagged versions they pick up at the grocery store. The category showed enough promise for Starbucks to launch its new Via Ready Brew instant coffee in the grocery channel. The preportioned sticks of instant coffee joined another newcomer: Starbucks Natural Fusions, naturally flavored premium coffee with ingredients like vanilla, cinnamon and nutmeg that is ground and blended into the coffee. Coffee consumers are also making good use of the single-cup brewing systems that they invested in when the economy headed south. Such is evidenced by an especially brisk increase in sales of single-cup coffee. Keurig-compatible K-cups, Tassimo T-Discs and other single-cup pods were so popular that sales more than doubled to $96.7M in the food channel.

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