King Car Group
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The King Car Group (Chinese: 金車公司) is a Taiwanese conglomerate which owns a number of international brands such as the Kavalan Distillery and Mr. Brown Coffee.
The name King Car is a rough translation of the Chinese "to drive wealth."[1]
History
The King Car Group was founded in 1979 by Lee Tien-Tsai and at first sold root beer. Root beer was not lucrative and in 1982 King Car pivoted to canned coffee, setting up the Mr. Browns brand on the advice of a Japanese mentor of Lee. By the mid 1990s the Mr. Brown brand was dominant domestically and was expanding internationally. In 1995 King Car tried to enter the alcohol market for the first time but their plans were rejected by the government which at the time held a monopoly on alcohol production.[1] Following the de-monopolization of the alcohol market in 2002 King Car began work on its first distillery, Kavalan, which opened in 2005.[2]
