Good news for fans of caffeinated beverages, the Coca-Cola company are going to buy Costa Coffee for a cool £3.9 billion.
As quoted by the Financial Times, Coca-Cola’s president and chief executive James Quincey said the purchase would give his company “new capabilities and expertise in coffee, and our system can create opportunities to grow the Costa brand worldwide”.
“Hot beverages is one of the few remaining segments of the total beverage landscape where Coca-Cola does not have a global brand,” he continued. “Costa gives us access to this market through a strong coffee platform.”
The soft drinks juggernaut bought the coffee chain from Whitbread, who have owned the franchise for 23 years, purchasing it when it had less than 40 stores. They now have almost 4,000 worldwide.
Whitbread’s chief executive Alison Brittain said that they could use the money to pay shareholders and reduce their debt, improve pension funds and focus on their Premier Inn chain of budget hotels.
She told the BBC’s Today programme that the situation was a “win-win” and she expected Coca-Cola to introduce “ready to drink, cold brew coffees”.
“You could see Costa absolutely everywhere,” she continued. “In vending machines, hotels, restaurants, pubs, cafés – in all the places you see Coke today.”
Do you think this is a good idea, or is this a Disney/20th Century Fox buyout level of evil capitalism? Either way, we probably should have seen it coming.
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