Doutor Coffee (株式会社ドトールコーヒー) is a Japanese retail company that specializes in
coffee
Coffee is a drink prepared from roasted coffee beans. Darkly colored, bitter, and slightly acidic, coffee has a stimulant, stimulating effect on humans, primarily due to its caffeine content. It is the most popular hot drink in the world.
S ...
roasting and
coffee shop franchising. It was founded by Toriba Hiromichi.
Information
The company currently has over 900 locations in Japan, has begun expansion in
Taiwan
Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia, at the junction of the East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocean, with the People's Republic of China (PRC) to the northwest, Japan to the nort ...
and most recently in
Malaysia
Malaysia ( ; ) is a country in Southeast Asia. The federation, federal constitutional monarchy consists of States and federal territories of Malaysia, thirteen states and three federal territories, separated by the South China Sea into two r ...
and
Singapore
Singapore (), officially the Republic of Singapore, is a sovereign island country and city-state in maritime Southeast Asia. It lies about one degree of latitude () north of the equator, off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, borde ...
. It is listed on the
Tokyo Stock Exchange
The , abbreviated as Tosho () or TSE/TYO, is a stock exchange located in Tokyo, Japan. It is the third largest stock exchange in the world by aggregate market capitalization of its listed companies, and the largest in Asia. It had 2,292 listed co ...
. Doutor Coffee has over 1,200 outlets altogether.
History
Doutor Coffee opened the first European styled café in
Harajuku, Japan on 18 April 1980. The size of the small shop was only nine square meters. Despite the small size and local competition, the Doutor Coffee shop succeeded and has expanded to the company that it is now.
Doutor Coffee opened its own coffee plantation in 1991, in
Kona District, Hawaii
Kona is a ''moku'' or district on the Big Island of Hawaii in the State of Hawaii, known for its Kona coffee and the location of the Ironman World Championship Triathlon. In the current system of administration of Hawaii County, the ''moku'' o ...
. It opened a second plantation in 1995.
Roasting coffee
Roasting coffee using hot air is a commonly used method by most roasting plants, but Doutor says it "takes away the original flavor of the coffee" and explored other ways to roast the coffee. They found open flame roasting their preferred method and ended up embarking on researching and developing its own industrial open flame roaster to roast its coffee.
See also
*
List of coffeehouse chains
This list of notable coffeehouse chains catalogues the spread and markets share of coffeehouses world-wide. This list excludes the many companies which operate coffeeshops within retail establishments, notably bookstores and department stores, or ...
References
Coffeehouses and cafés in Japan
Retail companies based in Tokyo
Restaurants established in 1976
Japanese brands
Coffee companies of Japan
Coffee brands
1976 establishments in Japan
Companies listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange
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