Whitbread wakes up and smells the artisan coffee
Costa Coffee is dipping its toe into the water of artisan coffee, owner Whitbread said today. It will open its first artisan outlet (as yet without a brand name) in Sheldon Street, Covent Garden, within the next two months.
“It will have three new brewing techniques and single source coffees,” said Alison Brittain chief executive of Whitbread. “The coffee market is moving rapidly and alongside [new, fresher and quicker formats] Costa Fresco and Costa Pronto we want to see if our customers want artisan coffee.”
Brittain, who took over from Andy Harrison last December, cheered investors with a 12% rise in full-year profits to £546 million calming some fears that Costa or Premier Inns growth had slowed.
She also reiterated Whitbread’s target of having 85,000 hotel rooms in the UK and £2.5 billion of Costa sales by 2020.
She said: “You can be sure I’ve kicked all the tyres on those targets and even when I’ve added in things such as Airb’n’b they still stand up.
“The fact is that we still drink far less coffee in the UK than they do in many countries and also, even with disruptors, the demand for
hotel rooms in this country — particularly in London — will carry on growing.”
Premier has also made its first move into the German hotel market.
In the year to early March Whitbread’s revenues rose by 12% to £2.9 billion with hotel operating profits up 11.3% to £447 million and Costa’s profits up 15.8% to £153 million. The full-year dividend is to rise 10% to 90.35p and the shares climbed 153p, or 3.5%, to 4020p.
