Compose Coffee Brand Guidelines: A 2014 Busan Roaster’s Franchise in the Jollibee Group

A coffee distributor, a roasting plant and a franchise.

Compose Coffee is a South Korean coffee franchise that began in the port city of Busan in 2014. Its roots go back further. Chosun Biz reported in August 2024 that the founder, Yang Jae-seok, set up a company called JM Tongsang in Busan in 1999 to distribute coffee and café ingredients. In 2014 he opened JM Coffee Roasters in Busan, a roasting plant combined with a specialty coffee shop, and in the same year launched Compose Coffee as a low-price franchise brand.

The roasting side has stayed part of the story. A July 2024 report in Philstar, summarising a stock-exchange disclosure, described Compose Coffee as two companies, Compose Coffee Co. Ltd. and its roasting company JMCF Co. Ltd., both established in Busan in 2014. Chosun Biz wrote that the chain’s own roasting plant was widely seen in the industry as the main thing that set it apart from rival budget chains.

Growth came quickly once the chain moved beyond Busan. Korean Wikipedia says store numbers rose sharply after 2019, with the 1,000th store opening in 2021. Sources differ slightly on the next milestone: Chosun Biz put the chain past 2,000 stores in 2022, while Korean Wikipedia dates the 2,000th store, in Hanam, to March 2023. By June 2024, Philstar reported, citing the company’s own website, there were 2,612 stores in South Korea. Chosun Biz noted that every store was franchised and that the count, above 2,600 at that point, was the third-highest among Korean coffee chains, after Ediya Coffee and Mega MGC Coffee.

For most of that decade the business was privately held. Chosun Biz reported that Yang owned all of the company until the 2024 sale to the Jollibee Group, described below.

Americanos, lattes and Korean-style drinks.

Compose Coffee sells a broad, everyday menu rather than a narrow specialty list. Marketing-Interactive, reporting on the chain’s Philippine launch in August 2026, described it as covering coffeehouse staples such as Americanos and flavoured lattes alongside Korean-inspired drinks, with non-coffee lattes, frappés, smoothies, ades, juices, desserts and seasonal products. When the first Taiwanese store opened for a trial run in spring 2026, The Korea Herald reported that the iced Americano, a red bean injeolmi milkshake and a dalgona latte were among the items that drew the most interest.

The chain also leaned on celebrity advertising as it grew. Chosun Biz reported that at the end of 2023 Compose Coffee signed V, a member of the K-pop group BTS, as its advertising model, a move the paper linked to a rise in brand recognition while the chain was still in talks over its sale.

For a designer, the brand is a study in how a franchise network carries one look across thousands of small shopfronts. The stores are run by franchisees, so the sign, the cup and the menu board do the work of keeping the chain recognisable from one street to the next. Compose Coffee does not publish a public brand manual, and its typeface and colour values are not documented in the sources used here, so the palette in this guide is our own reading of the roast, the café counter and the warm accent tones common to Korean budget coffee bars.

The company today keeps offices in both of its home cities: Korean Wikipedia lists a head office in Busan and a second head office in Seoul’s Seongsu district. In August 2026 Marketing-Interactive named the chief executive of Compose Coffee Korea as Gordon Cho, quoting him on the brand’s Philippine opening.

Design and documentation.

South Korea’s café, bakery and quick-meal chains present themselves first through the street. Most are franchise networks, so a shopfront, a cup and a menu board have to look the same in thousands of places run by different owners. When the Korea Times reported in January 2025 that one coffee chain’s rebrand was on hold, the reason it gave was franchisees’ reluctance to pay for new store fittings: in a franchise system, a new look is also a shared bill.

Menus carry much of the identity. The chains in this group name their dishes and drinks rather than describing them in general terms, and abroad they lean on Korean flavours: dalgona lattes, sikhye, roasted sweet potato, injeolmi and black sesame cakes, misutgaru drinks and street snacks such as hotteok and bungeoppang, according to press reports on their stores in Malaysia, Laos and the United States. Cakes, toast, porridge, lunchboxes and burgers each give a chain its own signature.

Ownership is described plainly in the companies’ own pages and in the business press. Some chains belong to large food groups, some to private equity funds and some to individual owners; a single brand can pass through several of these in two decades. Store counts are published by the companies and repeated by the press with dates, and the numbers change quickly in a market the Korea Times described as split between premium and budget tiers.

Expansion abroad takes two main forms in these reports: a master franchise, in which a local partner runs the stores, or a subsidiary that runs them directly. This guide sets out what can be checked about each brand: who founded it, who owns it now, how its stores and menus present it at home and abroad, and which facts rest only on the company’s own word.

A Philippine owner and stores abroad.

The ownership changed in 2024. On 2 July 2024 Philstar reported a disclosure by Jollibee Foods Corporation, the Philippine restaurant group, under which its subsidiary Jollibee Worldwide Pte. Ltd. would own 70% of Compose Coffee Co. Ltd. and JMCF Co. Ltd. The remaining shares went to two private-equity investors: 25% to Elevation Equity Partners Korea and 5% to Titan Dining II LP, which Philstar described as the private-equity firm that owns the Tim Ho Wan brand. GMA News confirmed in January 2026 that the group had acquired its 70% stake in 2024, and a Philstar report in April 2026 described Compose Coffee as the Jollibee Group’s majority-owned Korean coffee brand.

The store count kept rising after the sale. GMA News reported in January 2026 that Compose Coffee had reached 3,000 stores in September 2025, having added 1,000 in an 18-month period.

Expansion abroad began before the deal and gathered pace after it. Korean Wikipedia dates the first overseas store, in Singapore, to July 2023. In Taiwan the chain works through a master franchise with the local milk tea brand Milksha, Korean Wikipedia says; GMA News lists Milksha among the brands in which the Jollibee Group holds a stake. The Korea Herald reported on 2 April 2026 that the first Taipei store had drawn long queues during its trial opening, and Korean Wikipedia gives 14 April 2026 as the formal opening date. In the Philippines, Marketing-Interactive reported, the first store opened on 7 August 2026 at Market! Market! in Bonifacio Global City, Taguig, as the start of a franchise-led network. Chosun Biz placed the move in August 2026 among a wider push abroad by Korean budget coffee chains, naming Compose Coffee alongside Paik’s Coffee, Mega MGC Coffee and The Venti.

For a design guide, Compose Coffee shows how a Busan roaster turned a single franchise format into a network of thousands of near-identical counters, and then carried it to Singapore, Taipei and Manila under a Philippine owner. Compare it with Ediya Coffee, another large Korean franchise, and Paik’s Coffee, a fellow budget chain now opening abroad. For this guide we use roast brown, charcoal and a honey yellow with a condensed sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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