Coffeepots Limited

Coffeepots Limited, the operator of 6 Costa Coffee outlets in Scotland has recently been sold to CP Properties Limited, a company owned by two private investors who, until very recently, ran successful chains of Domino’s Pizza outlets.

The multi million pound deal was initiated, and full deal management services were provided to the Sellers, by Smith Cooper who acted as lead deal advisers. Smith Cooper Corporate Finance have a specialism in franchise, a sector in which it dominates the UK deals market for fast food and drinks.

The sellers, Dennis and Kathryn Evans, were early adopters of the Costa brand starting their business a decade ago. In subsequent years they developed 6 very high-performing stores, mainly located in shopping centres and retail parks rather than in traditional high street locations, employing around 85 staff. The stores, which are situated in the Glasgow area between Greenock in the West and Falkirk in the East, are exceptionally well run, repeatedly achieving the highest scores in the system for the regular Costa checks.

CP Properties Limited is owned by Colin Wilson and Pat Dunese, both of whom operated very successful Domino’s franchises in the Glasgow area until their recent sale. CP Properties, which has been able to neatly switch its senior management team from operating Domino’s to running the newly acquired Costa business, plans to continue growing the business and the Costa brand in Scotland.

Costa Coffee is a global business operating in around 30 countries and is owned by Whitbread PLC. It dominates the UK coffee shop market with over 2,000 stores, about 41% of which are franchised, and operates around 4,700 Costa Express machines. Whitbread operates in 30 countries and plans to grow worldwide store numbers by 200 in 2016, targeting £2.5bn of global sales by 2020.

“We have great admiration for the team at Smith Cooper Corporate Finance. We could not have achieved the deal we did without them on our team. John and David worked tirelessly on our behalf and we appreciate the fact that without their guidance, knowledge and relentless, dogged determination to get the deal done we could not have achieved our goal. They were professional, dedicated to our cause and just good fun to work with. We have no hesitation in recommending their services.”

Coffeepots Limited – Kathryn and Dennis Evans