Overview
Costa Limited, trading as Costa Coffee, is a British coffeehouse chain with headquarters in Loudwater, Buckinghamshire, England.
Costa Coffee was founded in London in 1971 by Sergio Costa as a wholesale operation supplying roasted coffee to caterers and specialist Italian coffee shops. It was acquired by Whitbread in 1995, then sold to The Coca-Cola Company in January 2019 in a deal worth $4.9 billion, and has grown to 3,401 stores across 31 countries and 18,412 employees. The business has 2,121 UK restaurants, over 6,000 Costa Express vending facilities and a further 1,280 outlets overseas, including 460 in China.
Costa is the second largest coffeehouse chain in the world, and the largest in the UK.
History
From Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0).