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:
“Considered in its entirety, psychoanalysis won’t do. It’s an end product, moreover, like a dinosaur or a zeppelin; no better theory can ever be erected on its ruins, which will remain for ever one of the saddest and strangest of all landmarks in the history of twentieth-century thought.”
—Peter B. Medawar (1915–1987)
“No one can understand Paris and its history who does not understand that its fierceness is the balance and justification of its frivolity. It is called a city of pleasure; but it may also very specially be called a city of pain. The crown of roses is also a crown of thorns. Its people are too prone to hurt others, but quite ready also to hurt themselves. They are martyrs for religion, they are martyrs for irreligion; they are even martyrs for immorality.”
—Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874–1936)
“The history of medicine is the history of the unusual.”
—Robert M. Fresco, and Jack Arnold. Prof. Gerald Deemer (Leo G. Carroll)