Costa’s Jim Slater takes centre stage at MWL

Costa Coffee is continuing to power forward profit for parent company Whitbread and one of the architects of the brand’s success will take centre stage at Marketing Week Live (MWL) to explain how it “locks in loyalty”.

Jim Slater

Costa has just posted results showing total sales up by 27.5% and like for like sales by 5.5%, with underlying profits for the division up 38% to £69.7m.

Costa continues to innovate and identify customer needs, for instance the tie-up with Kraft for a range of ‘At Home’ coffee products.

Former marketing director Jim Slater, now Costa Enterprise managing director, will be speaking at MWL to share his experience of putting the focus on the customer. Given Costa scooped Brand of the Year at the Marketing Week Engage Awards last year there will be plenty of useful insights and advice for attendees.

Slater says: “We spend an enormous amount of time and effort understanding coffee drinkers in a variety of different ways: some qualitative, some quantitative and some purely instinctive based on experience.

“All of our strategic change projects stem from us discovering meaningful customer needs.”

The coffee chain has 2.203 stores in the UK and overseas as well as 1,192 unmanned Costa Express machines, delivering high quality coffee on-the-go.

Marketing Week Live, takes place at London Olympia on 27 and 28 June and is free to attend for all registrants. Find out more here

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