Expansion of the sugar industry...?

Question

What factors led to the expansion of the sugar industry in the Atlantic world in the seventeenth century?

Answer 1

Sugar wasn't used for much. Sweetening food hadn't been a necessity for all of human history beforehand, and the rum industry was just getting started.

The key is, who was going to pay for the unnecessary sweetening of food, and who was going to buy all that booze? The answer is whoever was getting rich, or at least gaining disposable income, at the time.

OK, that's not an answer yet, but in the early stages of the European industrial revolution, workers were severed from their farms and traditional ways, and had some cash, and their employers became filthy rich. All of them were potential sugar and rum consumers. And they were concentrated in England, France, Holland, and some of the German states.

Oh, and can you guess which of these were involved in the transatlantic slave trade? The big connection seems to be that the transatlantic slave trade concentrated wealth and industrial development in a few European cities, and workers in a few American islands and port regions. The raw materials flooded the cities, and the cities consumed or transformed them.

I'm probably missing something subtle.