Coasta Coffee Expresso Self Serve coming soon -so?

by chee Leng (on coffee makers)
(Singapore)

Coast Coffee is one of UK bigger coffee chain and they are launching a new services known as the Coasta Expresso self-serve.

A self-serve is a concept where consumers pay and make the coffee themselves. It is not much different from coffee vending machine except that the coffee is fresh coffee versus vending machine freeze dried coffee.

A self serve station is faster, probably cheaper and is best for busy professionals on the way to work.

If you are asking whether people would be buying from such a station, this is already a proven business model.

Coasta Coffee is building on a recent acquisition of Coffee Nation that has more than 900 outlets -so this is a very viable business.

And Coasta Coffee aims to build this new platform into a 3000 outlets giant that gives workers an easy and lower cost coffee.

My $0.02

This is a concept that many coffee chains might explore in the future given the high rental cost and the lower manpower required in a self service outlet.

In fact, in a recent article, we cite that the explosive growth of Subway is due to its easier to manage smaller size outlet.

Small is the new big. The whole idea is to grow the outlets, not to have big outlets. Give morning commuters what they want, short queues, hot coffee, maybe cheaper coffee and you have a winning formula.

With the this genre of self-service coffee shop taking off, single serve coffee maker might play a big part in this whole process.

Single serve that offers self-service is already booming in South Korea and it would take long for coffee chains to piece the two together to offer another business model.

A self-service mobile station where consumers just purchase the ingredients, use the single serve coffee machine to brew their coffee and be on their way.

This could be one model that Starbucks might be coming out with. They have all the criteria:

1.Starbucks is already a known brand, so securing mobile location is no issue.

2. They have Keurig, a well know single serve coffee maker, that can cater high turnover.

3. They dare to try different solutions, i.e. high street cafe in Seattle, alcohol in Starbucks.

Regardless the solution, a self serve coffee shop has great potential and my take is that this would be an area that coffee chains might be competing in the near future.