US coffee drinkers favour single-serve machines
 Single-serve coffee machine purchases in US growing as more coffee companies roll out such machines. Charleston, March 23, 2012 -
More Americans say they own single-cup coffee brewers compared with a year ago and more of them are happy with the hot drink that these new machines produce, a coffee survey released on Friday showed.    "It's really beginning to make an impact in the coffee consumption of Americans," said Allen Bach, manager of market research for The J.M. Smucker Company. "We suspect it will continue (to escalate) into the future."
   The 2012 National Coffee Drinking Trends survey from the National Coffee Association (NCA), released at the association's conference in Charleston, SC, showed that 10 percent of the adults surveyed in the United States owned single-cup brewers, up from 7 percent in 2011.
    The NCA survey also showed that the consumption of coffee on a daily basis jumped by 7 percentage points, as reflected by the survey participants, "moving coffee solidly ahead of soft drinks," the release stated.Of the single-serving users, 37 percent said they just purchased their machine within the past six months and 25 percent rated the coffee they produce as "excellent", compared with 15 percent who stated this last year, the survey said.    Roughly a quarter of the people surveyed who own single-cup systems, however, aren't using them, Bach said.    Those who drink daily from this system, are consuming 2.2 cups a day, he said.     

  Coffee study dates back to 1950

The NCA study has been conducted annually since 1950 and is the longest available statistical series of consumer drinking patterns in the United States, the association said in a press release.    It surveyed nearly 3,000 adults online who were randomly selected from an online panel, and took place between mid-January and mid-February.    A growing number of coffee companies are selling their roast and ground beans in the single-serve format, in which one-cup portions are sold in various forms of cups, discs or pods.These refills are placed in a machine designed for them and instantly brew one fresh cup of coffee.    Large coffee companies such as Starbucks Corp, Green Mountain Coffee Roasters Inc, Sara Lee Corp, Kraft Foods and Nestle SA are venturing into the single-serve market.     Data supplied by Euromonitor International in January showed single-portion coffee brewers make up 8 percent of total worldwide coffee sales. 

            Coffee consumption second to water
"Coffee is, after water, the most commonly consumed beverage in the U.S. on a past-day basis," said Michael Edwards, managing director for Dig Insights Inc, a consumer research company that was a part of the study.    This year, the report more accurately reflected the consumption behaviors of Hispanic and African Americans.    "We hadn't done a very good job of representing African American and Hispanic Americans. This year we've corrected that," Edwards said.    "It's simply looking at a different base of consumers."    The study showed that daily coffee consumption in 2012 climbed, with 65 percent of the adults who were surveyed saying they drank the popular beverage daily, from 58 percent in 2011.     "We can't say the market has grown but the number is higher than we've projected in past years," Edwards said.    The survey has a margin of error of plus or minus 1.8 percent.