History
Bruno and Sergio Costa founded a coffee roastery in Lambeth, London in 1971, supplying local caterers and coffee shops with their slow-roasted blend mocha Italia. Costa branched out to retailing coffee in 1978, when their first store opened in Vauxhall Bridge Road, London.
In 1995, the business was acquired by Whitbread, becoming a wholly owned subsidiary. In 2009 Costa celebrated the opening of their 1,000th store - in Cardiff. In December 2009, Costa Coffee agreed to acquire Coffee Heaven for £36 million, adding 79 stores in central and eastern Europe. By the end of 2010 the company had overtaken Starbucks in the UK, reaching a 37.6% market share measured by revenues.
Read more about this topic: Costa Coffee
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Indeed, the Englishman’s history of New England commences only when it ceases to be New France.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The history of medicine is the history of the unusual.”
—Robert M. Fresco, and Jack Arnold. Prof. Gerald Deemer (Leo G. Carroll)
“We have need of history in its entirety, not to fall back into it, but to see if we can escape from it.”
—José Ortega Y Gasset (1883–1955)