Whitbread in sales lift as Costa grows
STRONG turnover and new stores at Costa Coffee have helped Whitbread raise its sales by 9.2 per cent.
Total sales at its coffee chain in the last three months were 22.5 per cent up on a year ago.
Costa was boosted by the opening of 73 new branches during the period, as well as new customers joining its loyalty scheme. Whitbread’s Premier Inn chain also did well thanks to strong sales in London, with growth of eight per cent.
But trading at its restaurants, which are based outside London, was hurt by “a more difficult casual dining market” chief exec Andy Harrison said.
Like-for-like sales at its restaurants, which ignore the effects of new restaurant space, fell 1.4 per cent compared with a year ago.
The overall sales figures were largely in line with analysts’ forecasts. Business was “adversely affected by the extended Easter and Royal Wedding holiday”, Harrison said.
He attributed that to a drop in business travellers due to extended holidays and pub-goers only using premises with gardens in the May heatwave.
The FTSE 100 hotel and restaurant group plans to open another 300 Costa Coffee outlets over the next year, a 15 per cent increase, and to add 4,000 rooms to Premier Inn, which is a nine per cent increase.
Harrison said: “We are very pleased with the results especially in a tough trading environment.”
LONDON | AN ECONOMIC OASIS
THE capital is weathering the economic downturn much better than might have been expected with coffee bars, hotels and pubs bursting at the seams, according to two chief executives yesterday.
Andy Harrison at Whitbread and Clive Watson at Capital Pub Company, who both reported buoyant sales, extolled the virtues of London as an oasis in a country where the downturn has drained sales and seen pub closures in their dozens.
Harrison said his Premier Inns in the capital had seen an eight per cent sales rise, compared with a minor lift in other parts of the country.
The jump has been fuelled mainly by business travellers who have come flooding back since the global economy started on the road to recovery.
Costa has performed well across the country but it is London where customers have the disposable income to splash out.
Similarly Watson at Capital Pubs said there were no shortage of affluent punters to fill his pubs on any given day of the week.
The company is planning an expansion on the strength of the spending power in London, which evidently has its own “micro economy”.