Plans foray into full-fledged restaurant business.
The Coffee Day Group, which runs India’s largest chain of coffee bars under the brand Café Coffee Day, is understood to be preparing a blueprint for a major expansion of its hospitality business.
According to sources close to the group, Coffee Day Group which already has a presence in the premium resorts business is looking at starting restaurants shortly while plans for motels are being firmed up. The company has already extended the concept of coffee bars to include a variety of meals through its lounge cafes and is now readying for full-fledged restaurants shortly. The company officials had earlier stated that they are planning to set up highway motels.
Coffee Day Group has been aggressively rolling out plans during the past 18 months, post the Rs 1,200 crore fund raising from three marquee private equity players — KKR, Standard Chartered Private Equity and New Silk Route Partners. Coffee Day Group is now straddles a wide array of businesses to include food processing, hospitality, logistics, furniture, finan-cial services, granites, waste management and commer-cial realty development besi-des its core business of being a coffee bean exporter and retailer.
According to information available, Coffee Day Group is looking at an aggressive ramp up of its premium resorts business as well. Coffee Day Group at present has three functional resorts in Karnataka, while a fourth one is being planned on the Mangalore coast. It is also understood that the Coffee Day Group has snapped up another premium resort — the Barefoot in the Andamans — which was partly owned by low-cost aviation pioneer G R Gopinath.
Even as this expansion is being planned, Café Coffee Day, the flagship coffee bars business, is looking to add around 350 cafes during 2011 taking the number close to 1,500. Industry information further indicates that the company is also looking actively at acquisitions in West Asia and Europe to extend its overseas footprint, even as Starbucks is set to start its cafes in India.
In addition to these expansion plans, the Group is also embarking on expanding its furniture and food processing business. While the food processing business will envisage an investment of around Rs 200 crore, industry sources indicate that the furniture business is likely to be scaled up expansively on the lines of Ikea model, which envisages furniture designed to be assembled by the consumer rather than being sold pre-assembled, which reduces the costs substantially.
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