Costa Coffee is a British coffeehouse chain and a subsidiary of The Coca-Cola Company. It is headquartered in Dunstable, England.
Costa Coffee was founded in London in 1971 by brothers Bruno and Sergio Costa as a wholesale operation supplying roasted coffee to caterers and specialist Italian coffee shops. Acquired by Whitbread in 1995, it was sold in 2019 to The Coca-Cola Company in a deal worth £3.9bn, 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, with 460 in China alone.
Coca-Cola announced its intention of acquiring Costa from the parent company Whitbread PLC for $5.1 billion. The deal, which closed on 3 January 2019, gave Coca-Cola a strong coffee platform across parts of Europe, Asia Pacific, the Middle East, and Africa.
Costa is the second-largest coffeehouse chain in the world and the largest in the UK.