Costa Coffee is a British multinational coffeehouse company headquartered in Dunstable, United Kingdom and a wholly owned subsidiary of Whitbread PLC. It is the second-largest coffeehouse chain in the world (behind Starbucks) and the largest in the United Kingdom.
Costa Coffee was founded in London in 1971 by the Italian brothers Sergio and Bruno Costa, as a wholesale operation supplying roasted coffee to caterers and specialist Italian coffee shops. It was acquired by Whitbread in 1995, since when it has grown to over 1,700 stores across 28 countries. The business has 1,375 UK shops, 920 Costa Express vending machines and a further 800 shops overseas.
Read more about Costa Coffee: History, Costa Book Awards, Controversies
Famous quotes containing the word coffee:
“It’s just like when you’ve got some coffee that’s too black, which means it’s too strong. What do you do? You integrate it with cream, you make it weak. But if you pour too much cream in it, you won’t even know you ever had coffee. It used to be hot, it becomes cool. It used to be strong, it becomes weak. It used to wake you up, now it puts you to sleep.”
—Malcolm X (1925–1965)