Coffee consumption in Taiwan began during the period of Japanese rule, and was but one part of the Meiji incorporation of Western iconographies into its colonial landscape in Taiwan. The early KMT era took over this legacy while providing a new Western inspired model of the coffee shop that would evolve side by side with earlier Japanese precedents. Both styles of coffee shop were prohibitively expensive for the vast majority of Taiwanese. The 1980s marked a third stage in Taiwan's coffee culture signified by broadening class and gender access to coffee shop culture, as Japanese and American corporate food and coffee chains began serving Taiwan's new middle class.