India’s leading fine coffee cafe chain and a division of coffee conglomerate Amalgamated Bean Coffee Trading Company Café Coffee Day (CCD) has added more products in its offering. The chain has started to offer north Indian Paratha, south Indian Idli, Omelette and many such products in its coffee retail chain besides serving coffee and other ready-to-eat products. According to S Jayaraman, senior general manager-business development, CCD, the new offerings in the basket are currently operational on trial basis at few of its stores on highway petrol pumps.
“We have tie-ups with almost all the oil marketing companies in the country and a large sum of our 718 operational stores is present at petrol pumps. CCD outlets at petrol pumps consist of stores within the city petrol pumps as well as at highways. On the highway, a customer needs more than just coffee. He needs food as well. This prompted us to come up with this plan,” elaborated Jayaraman to IndiaRetailing.
Further, the company also prefers store expansion at highway petrol pumps because of adequate parking space. “Now the roads in India are good with lot more people going on highways. Business travelers, now a days, too choose highways. Parking space is the biggest advantage at such places besides having 24×7 security,” clarifies Jayaraman.
However, for Jayaraman the biggest challenge at highway stores is electricity. “Round the clock availability of power is the biggest issue. We cannot operate the stores most of the time on generators. Further, getting manpower is also a problem as the staff is needed to stay somewhere near the outlet,” he adds.
With 718 Coffee Day outlets, the company enjoys strong presence in NCR with 114 outlets. The company which operates in India through company-owned outlets is also present in overseas market of Karachi, Pakistan and Vienna, Austria with 18 franchisee outlets. Coffee Days’s different divisions include Coffee Day Fresh n Ground (which runs 354 Coffee bean and powder retail outlets), Coffee Day Xpress (with 341 Coffee Day Kiosks), Coffee Day Take away (operating 7000 Vending Machines), Coffee Day Exports and Coffee Day Perfect (FMCG Packaged Coffee) division.
— Shailesh Shah
