I n today’s fast-paced, 24-hours-a-day world, our society has come to depend on coffee to keep the wheels turning. Whether we run into a coffee bar as we dash to work or a meeting, or serve ourselves a quick cup during a late-night session at a
university café, hospital cafeteria, or airport lounge, we’ve come to expect our favorite style of high-quality coffee to always be available.
Costa Express was created to serve this need in 2011 when the Whitbread Group,
the largest hospitality company in the United Kingdom and owner of Costa Coffee,
acquired Coffee Nation, a provider of self-service coffee concessions. The new company, Costa Express, partners on a revenue-sharing basis with retailers that service
public places like airports, railway stations, hospitals, universities, convenience
stores, gas stations, and offices, enabling them to profit from the growing consumer
demand for premium coffee “on the go” as well as the strong Costa brand. (Costa
Coffee is the largest coffee retailer in the U.K.) Costa Express provides its partners
with up-to-date, self-service coffee machines and regularly restocks the coffee and
supplies, so very little investment is required to get the business up and running.
After achieving early success in its first year, Costa Express set ambitious plans to
increase the number of machines in operation—what it refers to as its “estate” —
When its original
logistics and procurement
model threatened to
constrain its rapid
growth, the U.K.-based
coffee retailer went all-in:
new leadership, new
supply chain strategy,
new logistics provider,
and new software. Here’s
how it all paid off.
How Costa Express brewed up
a better supply chain
