Sales up at Costa Coffee owner

Whitbread, which also runs Premier Inn hotels, had previously warned that it was expecting tougher trading ahead,

On Wednesday, Whitbread said that the performance in the 13 weeks to June 2 was in line with its expectations.

Total sales at its Costa Coffee chain for the period rose by 8.7 per cent while Premier Inn’s total sales were up 9.2 per cent, with revenue per available room at its London properties rising by 2.8 per cent.

Alison Brittain, chief executive of Whitbread, said: “We have had a good start to the year, with first quarter sales growth of 7.6 per cent, in line with our expectations.

“Our continued drive to grow and innovate in our core UK businesses, focus on our strengths internationally and build capabilities to support long-term growth, combined with our ongoing cost efficiency programme, gives us confidence that we will make further good progress this year.

“Premier Inn continued to win overall market share with strong sales growth of 9.2 per cent as we benefitted from a resilient hotel market and the contribution from the circa 9,000 rooms we opened over the last two years, which are maturing well.

“Our digital development team continued to innovate for our customers and we launched our personalised business to business booking platform that helped to maintain our direct bookings at 94 per cent of sales. We were pleased that total UK occupancy was up compared to the first quarter last year at 79.2 per cent, at the same time as we increased our capacity.”

Costa Coffee saw “good performance” in its expanding travel and drive thru channels.

Ms Brittain said: “We are focused on executing on our initiatives, rolling out ‘Cold Brew’ in over 200 of our stores and our latest summer Frostino and cooler drinks have just gone on sale this month.

“We also successfully introduced our new breakfast range towards the end of the quarter, with further new food ranges launching throughout the year. Costa Express continued its expansion with 300 net installations during the quarter. “In May we officially opened our new Roastery giving us capacity to grow over the next 20 years and provide us with an industry-leading centre for coffee innovation and training.”