Rich rewards for Coffee Nation team after sale
COFFEE Nation’s chief executive Scott Martin and his team will be sharing an estimated £11.9m pot after Whitbread yesterday announced that it had paid £59.5m in cash for the company.
The management team bought the self service coffee company in 2008 with private equity backing from Investec and Milestone Capital.
Other Coffee Nation executives in line for a slice of the money are chairman Mike Tait and finance director Simon Vardigans.
Investec provided £5.25m of the £24m paid for Coffee Nation in the management buyout and has doubled its money.
Martin, who graduated from Nottingham Trent University in 1991 with a HND in catering and leisure management has steered the company to success using his expertise in branding.
Sales rose 37 per cent the year after the buyout under his strategy.
After graduation he worked for ice cream company Haagen Dazs, setting up franchises across Europe. He was then head of business development at Grand Metropolitan Foods, before moving to Unilever where he was head of a concepts group. He joined Coffee Nation as chief executive in 1999.