Costa Coffee has played a leading role in shaping the character of the UK café market since 1971, capturing hearts, minds and coffee habits and winning ‘Nation’s Favourite Coffee Shop’ in 2021, for the twelfth consecutive year (Allegra Strategies 2021).
However, we had a fundamental challenge. The market was increasingly crowded, and the loved Costa Coffee brand was losing relevance. Against this backdrop, our loyalty scheme was one of the least engaging, as one tabloid liked to point out – “…a mere 27 cups of coffee needed to be bought to get one”.
If that wasn’t enough, the pandemic hit, and everything changed for everyone. Hospitality was decimated and needed to reboot. Habits were forgotten and needed to be rebuilt.
This is the story of what Costa Coffee did next. How it set its strategy for growth, by putting loyalty at the heart of business recovery. How generosity and reciprocity were the key to building that loyalty. And how it doubled down on this strategy as the nation emerged from repeated lockdowns.
The results...
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