Have You Tried 5,000 Beverages?…How Starbucks Drinks Are Made [Naesaram]

③ Interview with Lee Myunghoon, Starbucks Beverage Team Leader
Development of Franchise's First Cold Brew Launch
Sold 170 Million Cups Thanks to 'Eoljuka' Craze

"I have tried roughly 5,000 different beverages. On tasting event days, when I have to drink a lot of beverages high in caffeine or sugar all at once, I often suffer from insomnia."

Lee Myung-hoon, the 44-year-old Beverage Team Leader who oversees the entire process from planning to development of beverage menus at Starbucks, the top coffee specialty store in Korea by sales, is an expert who had consistently developed beverages at SPC Dunkin before joining Starbucks in 2015.

On the 21st, Lee Myung-hoon, head of the Starbucks Beverage Team, poses holding the 'Vanilla Cream Cold Brew' he developed at the Starbucks headquarters in Jung-gu, Seoul. Photo by Moon Hye-won

Meeting with Asia Economy at Starbucks headquarters in Seoul, Team Leader Lee said, "Each team member in the beverage development part attempts to develop about 100 products annually, so the entire team develops around 600 beverages that are evaluated within the company." He added, "Because there are so many developed menus, I have tried roughly 5,000 beverages since joining the company. On in-house tasting event days, I drink a lot of beverages high in caffeine or sugar all at once, which causes side effects such as feeling overly good or suffering from insomnia."

The time to develop one beverage menu ranges from as short as four months to usually up to a year. He explained, "Seasonal promotion product lines such as New Year, summer, autumn, and Christmas are the menus the beverage team puts the most effort into, so the development period takes the longest."

A representative hit product created by Team Leader Lee and his team members is Cold Brew, the main contributor to the ‘Eol·Juk·A (Eoreo Jugeodo Iseu Americano, meaning ‘Iced Americano even if I freeze to death’)’ craze. It was also the first product he participated in developing after joining Starbucks. After receiving a proposal from the U.S. headquarters, it went through about a year of domestic development. Since its release in 2016, the first in the domestic coffee franchise industry, it has been a huge success with an average annual sales growth of over 30%. The cumulative sales volume is 170 million cups. Team Leader Lee and the beverage team, riding on the popularity of Cold Brew, have developed 11 different variations including Dolce Cold Brew, Vanilla Cold Brew, Oat Cold Brew, and Bijarim Cold Brew.

Team Leader Lee cites the unique taste different from the existing iced Americano and Starbucks’ freshness as the reasons for Cold Brew’s popularity. Cold Brew is an iced coffee beverage slowly extracted in small amounts with cold water over 20 hours. Starbucks’ Cold Brew is extracted daily by partners directly at the stores, so it lacks the strange smell typical of Cold Brew that might be experienced with other brands.

Starting with the bestseller Cold Brew, Team Leader Lee has successfully created popular products such as ‘regional co-prosperity beverages’ like Mungyeong Omija Fizzio and Goheung Yujati Blended, as well as special store-exclusive beverages like Bukhansan Lemon Earl Grey Blended. As a result, he took the position of Beverage Team Leader eight years after joining the company.

When developing another hit product, Mungyeong Omija Fizzio, he traveled extensively around Mungyeong for a full year, covering as much distance as the streets of Seattle in the U.S. He explained, "I put a lot of effort into this product, including personally turning the container regularly during the Omija fermentation process to prevent the sugar inside from settling."

Currently, the biggest concern for Team Leader Lee when developing beverages is simplifying the recipes. This is to enable partners (baristas) at the site to make the beverages as easily and quickly as possible. He said, "Delicious beverage recipes can easily become complicated, but our team’s job is to make them as simple as possible." He added, "Sometimes when I hear from partners that the manufacturing process is complicated and takes a long time, or when I receive customer complaints, I return to the office regardless of day or night shifts to continue researching the recipes."

Team Leader Lee plans to re-release the Choux Cream Latte as a spring season menu next month. In April, he will also introduce a new Fizzio product line using ingredients never tasted before.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.