The Hindu Business Line : Barista Coffee brews Rs 250-cr expansion

The coffee retail chain intends making investments to the tune of Rs 250 crore to set up an additional 70 outlets across the country, with the additional funds flowing into the company after Sterling Infotech picked up a 65 per cent stake in the company.

Besides the company has also embarked on market feasibility studies to launch its coffee parlours in more regions within South Asia in countries such as Bangladesh, Maldives, Bhutan, Maldives and Mauritius. It has also decided to set up 15 additional outlets in Sri Lanka.

"Till now we have been busy investing in our back-end operations but now we have improved processes in our supply chain efficiencies, IT, HR and training. We are now looking at investing an additional Rs 250 crore into our business, after the new promoters have taken a stake," says Mr Brotin Banerjee, Head, Marketing. Tata Coffee continues to retain its 35 per cent stake in the company.

Apart from coffee, Barista today has almost 35 per cent of its revenues coming from food and the rest of the revenues are from space selling and merchandising.

Mr Banerjee said: "There is an incremental revenue earner in the form of space sellingto ensure that our high street assets are made to `sweat' to the best extent possible. Today various brand managers are realising that Barista provides them with a platform to attract and interact with over 12 lakh consumers who frequent Barista and are in the age bracket of 17-35 years.

"We have certain select properties within Barista such as tent cards, posters, table top menu, cuts outs etc which can be utilised by other brands to interact and offer something unique and of value to our consumers. Some of the most recent ones are Microsoft, Emirates, Kotak, Citibank and Tata Indicom."

Barista has also been relying on several promotions to boost its revenues. According to Mr Banerjee, "There are basically various kinds of promotions that we have been doing. Some of these are meant for increasing consumption and offtake of the products whereby we give away a gift. Some of the major ones are a Close Up cassette of Shaan, Lee and Archies gift vouchers, movie tickets, audio cassettes and VCDs." For the month of August Barista has planned promotions along with cosmetic brands like L'Oreal and Elle.

Barista has a tracking model to measure the success of its promotions. Mr Banerjee adds, "Barista measures the success of each promotion on both qualitative and quantitative measures. We use tools like brand track, focus group discussions, consumer feedback and revenue numbers to see whether the promotions have worked for our consumers and for us."

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