Costa has appointed Carol Welch as Brand and Innovation Director, reporting to Managing Director, Christopher Rogers. In this newly created role, Carol will be responsible for continuing the development of the Costa brand as it expands globally and ensuring that Costa remains at the forefront of innovation.
Carol joins Costa having held senior Marketing and Innovation roles at PepsiCo, Cadbury Schweppes, Green & Blacks and most recently, Associated British Foods, where she lead the successful brand turnaround of both Jordans Cereal and Ryvita brands as Marketing & Innovation Director for the Jordans & Ryvita Company. She will join the Costa management board at the end of July.
Costa is the UK’s largest coffee shop chain with over 1600 stores and 3,000 Costa Express machines. It is also the world’s second largest coffee shop chain in 28 countries worldwide, including almost 300 stores in China. With 45 consecutive quarters of like for like sales growth in the UK, Costa’s performance goes from strength to strength and the brand has been instrumental in driving innovation in the sector, including the introduction of Flat White and the launch of Costa Express.
Doubling the business to £2 billion system sales
Chris Rogers, Managing Director of Costa comments, “Carol joins us as Costa moves into its next stage of growth. We have laid out ambitious plans to double the size of the business to £2bn system sales in the next five years and finding new and exciting ways to innovate our products and services will be vital as we build the Costa brand around the world.”
