Premium coffee house brand Caffè Nero has announced robust trading for the Third Quarter of its current financial year (1st December- February 29th) building on a strong first half year performance.
At Group level, Caffè Nero delivered 12.7% year on year sales growth during Q3 of 12.7% vs last year. In the UK for the same period, sales were up 10.5% vs Q3 last year.
The Q3 sales built on the strong first half of the financial year, driving year to date sales growth at Group level of 14.1% vs last year and 10.9% for the UK business.
The strong Q3 sales performance in the UK was supported by impressive Christmas trading, with over 7.7m customers served during December and sales of £34.5m. In January, the UK launch of the Honey Oat Latte also helped drive sales of speciality coffee by 2% year on year.
The UK Q3 sales performance was also underpinned by the sustained growth of Caffè Nero’s new channels business. The continuing strong partnerships with UberEats, Deliveroo and Just Eat saw sales through Delivery grow 13% year on year in Q3, with total sales year to date up 20%.
During the same period, the Caffè Nero “Coffee at Home” business drove sales growth of 55% year on year, fuelled by double digit sales growth through the brand’s own channels and retail partnerships with Waitrose, Amazon, Ocado and the Ambassador Theatre Group, as well as the successful embedding of the new partnership with Morrisons.
Caffè Nero also continued its new store opening programme in Q3, opening 8 new stores at Group level during the period, taking the total opened at Group level during the financial year to date to 45. In the UK, Caffè Nero opened a further two new stores, taking the total number of new openings this financial year so far to 14. As a result, The Group currently operates 1,062 stores across 10 countries with 10,000 employees, serving over 150 million customers a year.
Caffè Nero Founder and Group CEO, Gerry Ford commented: “We saw robust sales during the Third Quarter of our financial year which has built on the strong first half performance. Our Christmas sales were particularly pleasing with our stores delivering several record sales weeks during that period. I was also pleased to see the performance of the Honey Oat Latte launch in January. Our Delivery and “Coffee at Home” businesses continue to perform well and with a strong new store opening pipeline in front of us, including our first Drive Thru site at Stansted, I think we will have a strong finish to our financial year.”
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