The number of coffee shops in South Korea has more than doubled in four years to nearly 100-thousand.

According to the Korea Agro-Fisheries and Food Trade Corporation on Monday, the number of shops selling coffee and beverages stood at 99-thousand as of the end of last year, up 17-point-four percent from a year earlier.

Compared to four years earlier, the figure jumped by 50-thousand, marking an increase of 102-point-one percent.

The total solidifies coffee shops’ status as the second most prevalent eatery business in the nation following Korean restaurants, which numbered 362-thousand late last year. Coffee shops outnumbered chicken sellers for the first time in 2021 by 84-thousand to 76-thousand.

With the ever-growing popularity of coffee among Koreans, the value of coffee imports in the first eleven months of last year was tallied at over one-point-19 billion U.S. dollars, up 45-point-one percent from the same period a year earlier, according to the Korea Customs Service.

It is the first time over one billion dollars’-worth of coffee was imported to the nation in a year.