In 2009, Lloyd’s of London insured the tongue of Costa Coffee’s master taster, Gennaro Pelliccia, for 10 million pounds, a measure of how much the chain valued a consistent flavor. The company started far more modestly. Brothers Bruno and Sergio Costa, whose family moved to England from Parma in the 1950s, founded a roastery on Fenchurch Street in London in 1971 and spent a decade supplying caterers and Italian coffee shops before opening their first store on Vauxhall Bridge Road in 1981. When Whitbread bought the business in 1995 it had just 41 stores; by 2009 the 1,000th opened in Cardiff. After activist funds Elliott Advisors and Sachem Head pressed for a separation from Whitbread’s hotels, Coca-Cola bought Costa for $4.9 billion in January 2019.

Scale brought new machinery and new failures. The chain moved roasting to a 38 million pound plant in Essex, bought vending company Coffee Nation for 59.5 million pounds in 2011 to create Costa Express, and faced franchise worker complaints in 2019 about withheld tips, sick pay, and deductions. A 2024 inquest into the death of a 13-year-old girl who drank a hot chocolate made with cow’s milk despite a dairy-free order called its allergy training a tick box exercise. By August 2025 Coca-Cola was reported to be exploring a sale of the cafes while keeping the canned coffee.

• The 2017 roastery raised annual roasting capacity to 45,000 tons.
• Costa Express machines numbered over 14,200 by 2016.
• In 2017 Costa delivered coffee by drone to beachgoers in Dubai.
• The Costa Book Awards, started by Whitbread 51 years earlier, were discontinued in 2022.
• Greggs overtook Costa as the UK’s most popular coffee destination, and bids for the stores in September 2025 were described as lukewarm.