Costa Coffee snaps up self-service company
Self-service coffee from machines at petrol forecourts and railway stations is usually a grim affair - brown sludge in a paper cup.
Costa Coffee thinks it can change that after buying one of the industry's leading players, Coffee Nation, for £59.5 million.
That cash mostly goes to investors Mileston Capital and Investec, but management, including co-founder Scott Martin, also get a chunk.
Coffee Nation's 900 self-serve machines will be rebranded Costa Express and expanded to 3000 outlets in time. Whitbread, Costa's parent, estimates that 6 billion cups of coffee are sold each year from self-service machines.
Meanwhile, Whitbread unveiled another strong trading update, defying the slowdown in much of the consumer economy.
Sales at Premier Inn are up 5.1% in the 11 weeks to February 2011. At Costa, they are up 3% in stores which have been around for at least a year and 24% overall. The restaurants arm - Beefeater, Brewers Fayre and Table Table - saw sales rise 3.1%.
