Coffee Nation, Costa Express and the UK's coffee revolution

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0:52Hello and welcome to the Business Leader Podcast, where we look at the stories and strategies behind modern businesses. I'm Graeme Ruddick. In this episode, we're going to wake up and smell the coffee. We're going to find out about the coffee revolution that has taken over the UK. I speak to Martin Dawes, who founded Coffee Nation in the late 1990s. At that time, the coffee bar culture was yet to emerge in the UK. But today, Coffee Nation has become Costa Express. We will look at the story about how an idea about helping people buy quality coffee in shops across the country has turned into a business with more than 14 ,000 gourmet coffee machines in the UK.

1:34The way the idea came to me was that I read an article in a business magazine long since defunct called Business Age. And the article was about a US company. It was a big business listed on NASDAQ. And they put photocopiers into convenience stores, drug stores, etc. They had 30 ,000 machines across the US, France, and the UK. And what intrigued me was two things. One was I thought, wow, there's a little bit of revenue from lots of locations. And the second thing that attracted me was the business model. And the business model was a revenue share arrangement, whereby people would walk in to photocopy something.

2:18Of course, this was mid-90s. You may remember there's little signs on shop windows that said, copies four pence or whatever you go and you'd photocopy something and you'd probably buy something else whilst you were there a Mars bar or newspaper or whatever and so for the retailer it was a footfall generator and this was around the time that the the lottery had started in the UK on a very similar basis it would attract people into small shops so you do your photocopying it would increase footfall you'd spend some more money whilst you're in there and I thought wow wow, that's a great idea. The revenue share model was basically the more copies that were done, the more of that revenue the shopkeeper would retain.

2:57And the company, TRM, they own the photocopiers and they provided the inkjet cartridges, the paper, they maintain the machines, et cetera. And I thought, wow, that's a great business model, this revenue share arrangement. If I could find a product to put into Britain's thousands of corner shops on that basis, I could be on to a winner. So it was interesting because the business model came first, not the product. Where did you go next? What was the next step? So I got the business model and I then figured that often great businesses in the UK, they've actually started in America. Great ideas often, they start in the US and they come to the UK.

3:36And my wife had some family in New York, in Brooklyn, in fact. And so I figured that I'd get on a plane, go to the States and find an idea. It was literally as unscientific as that. So I went over to the US, stayed with her uncle in Brooklyn, and literally got the subway into Manhattan every day, walked the streets, literally looking for an idea for a business. And I saw all sorts of things, frozen yogurt, you name it, all sorts of things. But it was one particular day, and I was on a street corner, and two things caught my eye. One was a coffee shop, and you'll remember, these did not exist in the UK at the time.

4:11This was 1996. There was no coffee bar culture in the UK. at all at that time. A cappuccino was something he had on holiday. And there was this store that I saw called Starbucks. And I went in, you know, wow, amazing, great coffee, what an experience, et cetera. But it was a big retail operation. There was a lot of staff, you know, big retail, real estate, et cetera. And I figured that looked very complex. On the other street corner, opposite, was a US convenience store called 7-Eleven. And I went in there and what struck me in there immediately was that behind the counter there was literally a row of traditional pour over filter coffee machines pots this stuff was literally flying out the door a dollar a cup it was like in a styrofoam cup it wasn't even great coffee but this stuff was literally you know flying out the door was clearly big business for them and that was my aha moment and I figured okay I'm going to put takeaway coffee into British newsagents corner shops and and that's literally how the idea started from there whilst I was in the US I literally thought right okay I've got to I've got to find some coffee machine companies so I got the other pages out I went to C for coffee machines and I went to A and I met this company called Accorto and they came out they demonstrated this amazing espresso machine to me made beautiful coffee but the coffee machine itself was incredibly expensive and I figured well nobody's going to pay the price that would justify this investment of machine back in a corner shop in the UK.

5:44But, you know, the coffee was amazing. And of course, at that time, as I said, people drank instant coffee in the UK. So I came back, did a ton of research and found these little tabletop instant coffee machines that whisked up instant coffee, Nescafe, whisked it with powdered milk, and you call it cappuccino, basically. And that's literally how it started. Who was your first shop? How did you start getting into newsagents? So I remember literally the winter of 1996, I was literally walking the streets of South London and Peckham. And I had sort of like a leather presenter with some pictures. I got this revenue share model laid out and I was literally knocking on the doors of corner shops, Graham.

6:27And usually I was told to go away or worse. And eventually one or two said yes. And to be honest, it was it was an absolute unmitigated disaster for so many reasons. One, you know, those sorts of corner shops, a lot of them weren't even particularly clean or hygienic or whatever. And you wouldn't think of going into that kind of store to buy a, you know, to buy a coffee. This market just didn't exist at the time. And I remember also going to a market research firm and they put a proposal to me for actually doing some primary market research and asking customers of corner shops or petrol stations or bookstores or wherever, you know, would you buy a takeaway coffee from this location?

7:10And then I figured, you know what, well, what can they actually tell me? Because you can't, you can't ask customers to tell you what would be a good idea in the future as such. You've got to do that yourself as the entrepreneur. So I didn't do that research, but I literally, I sold very, very little coffee. And the next thing that I did was to get into better quality locations, still with the instant coffee self-serve i'd done a deal with nestle who own nescafe and they were very keen to get the nescafe brand out into non-traditional locations they'd seen how big takeaway coffee was in u.s convenience stores and they saw a similar opportunity in the uk so they welcomed me with open arms so this was this was nescafe takeaway nescafe um and then i went into better quality convenience stores um there was two companies one was spa and there was another one called All Days, which was probably the first big convenience store chain at the time in the UK.

8:03And I literally approached the CEO of both companies and got a very warm welcome. And they could see the opportunity likewise with hot food. This was a time when convenience retailing was just starting to take off in the UK. Tesco was just launching Express, Sainsbury's with the local format, et cetera. So they saw a great opportunity. They liked my business model. They like the revenue share arrangement because they didn't have to invest in the kit to start with and off I went into into better quality convenience stores and for sure I sold a little bit more coffee maybe 40 or 50 cups a week but you know this was a sort of 50 pence a cup so this was hardly going to set the world on fire uh so it was a really it was a really tough gig you mentioned there about about Nescafe, Spire and all days how did you get in front of these businesses how did you get them to listen to you?

8:55That's a great question. I think, to be honest, you know, my background with a consulting firm had probably given me a fair amount of confidence to sort of go and approach and deal with and, you know, and approach big companies, you know, so I was fairly confident in that sense. And I didn't, you know, I wrote a letter and then I followed up with a phone call, another phone call, another phone call until I literally got through until somebody said, OK, let's talk to this guy and, you know, see what he has to say. And, yeah, you know, it was some persistence, but I think it was an idea that was of interest to them, so I was pushing at an open door.

9:33Coffee Nation initially struggled. Hardly anyone was actually buying the coffee. But then Martin Dawes made a change that would transform the business. That was a sort of a two-year journey, to be honest. And literally, you know, selling sort of 40, 50 cups a week from these better quality convenience stores was great. But meanwhile, I was running out of money. It was a very tough time. And I literally tried everything to get people to buy more coffee. I'd give away a free newspaper or a sandwich or whatever. And I was slowly reaching this dawning realization that, you know, well, if they're not gonna buy a cup of coffee in the first place, they're not gonna be more attracted to that product by me giving away something else alongside it.

10:17and I got to a point where I thought I'd literally tried everything and I was literally at the point of starting to look at winding up the business and I thought you know what I'm just going to give this one last shot so I turned off the phone and I had machines scattered over spa and all day shops all around the UK and I got in the car I drove to one of the locations was a spa shop on a petrol forecourt in the Midlands and when I got there I parked the car went to the store said hi to the store manager went up to the coffee machine of course it was completely spotless because nobody ever bought bloody coffee from it and as I was there I was just about to sort of leave the shop feeling fairly despondent and somebody walked in and he walked up to the coffee machine and I thought oh maybe he's going to buy coffee and he looked at it he turned around went to walk out the store and then he saw me sort of lurking and he said are you anything to do with this coffee machine?

11:12And I said, yeah, well, it's actually my business. And he said, do you mind if I just give you some feedback? And I said, yeah, please, by all means, do so. And he said, look, I think this is a really great idea. He said, but what you're selling or wanting to sell me, I can go back to my office over the road, put the kettle on and get a jar of Nescafe out the cupboard, a pint of milk, and I can literally make what you're selling me for next to nothing. And he said to me, and these are the words that literally changed everything. He said, you've got to make the product the hero. You've got to wow me with your product.

11:44And it was in that moment, Graham, when I realized I'd put everything the wrong way around. So my thinking was that in those locations, the product had to be cheap, i.e. low price, to get people to buy it. And that was what I got completely wrong. I'd put the costs of having a low-cost coffee machine, I'd put that at the top of the priority list, rather than making it a great product that people wanted to buy. And that was the Eureka moment. So I was out of money. I was almost out of time, but I was now, this was the complete breakthrough, drove back to London and literally out of money. I blagged my way to get some tabletop real espresso machines that ground the beans, steam the milk, replaced four of the Nescafe machines with these bean-to-cut machines, ditched the relationship with Nestle had this MDF unit designed and made had the Coffee Nation logo on it I put the drink price up to a whopping 69 pence which I thought was like really ballsy you know and refitted four of those sites and literally within a week or two the sales rocketed and I was up to selling sort of like 900 cups per month from those four machines and at that point I knew that I was really onto something and it was all it was complete sort of homemade the MDF unit if you spill coffee on it it's started at fall apart because it was it was it just made of wood and the fridge for the mill there was a little pipe that went from the from the fridge to the coffee machine and that was ambient it wasn't chilled so if it wasn't cleaned after about every 10 drinks it started to smell bad but I learned something here and that is you know if you're actually giving something if you're taking something really exciting that people want to buy, they'll forgive you, you know, these sort of, these initial issues.

13:35What you've just outlined there sounds incredibly bold in hindsight. You put up the price, you ditched Nescafe, you went out and bought more expensive machines, but I'm guessing what you've said that that boldness was born out of complete necessity, given that the business just wasn't working up to that point. Yeah, I mean, literally at that point, Graham, I had nothing to lose, literally nothing to lose, all days in spa. They were pressing me to spend more money on marketing and in-store point of sale and all the rest of it for the instant coffee. And I went through this realization that actually pleasing the customer, as in the corporate customer, was not the answer.

14:14And I actually said to them, look, you can stay with me or not. It's entirely up to you but this isn't working and I had to be brutally honest and face reality not just with myself but with my customers at that point who stores my machines were it so yeah look it looked bold you know in hindsight but at the point at that point it was you know I got literally nothing to lose because it was it was either find the answer or you know I was gonna have to wind up the business. Coffee Nation now had a product market fit and it was growing quickly it was time to scale up. The business evolved from being a promising startup into one with a team of 50 people.

14:55Those four sites, they gave me the proof of concept, what we call today product market fit. And that was enough for me then to write the first business plan that was worth writing. I'd written many up until that point, which were all a complete and utter total waste of time. But now I'd actually got evidence, you know, as opposed to hope, I suppose. And so that enabled me to raise seed capital. And that seed capital enabled me then to develop the concept further. I then got on another plane, went back to the States and met the company there on the West Coast of the US with these beautiful big espresso machines that are ideal for self-serve use.

15:37And literally, I went in, met the CEO. He thought I was completely crazy. I said, look, you know, the opportunity here is a little bit of revenue from every cup of coffee sold. It's not just about, you know, selling a coffee machine. He thought I was nuts. We actually became their biggest global customer over, you know, a few years later. So that seed capital enabled me to then develop the concept further. And then from that enabled me to approach, you know, bigger, proper retailers that had, you know, massive footfall. And the first two of those were Welcome Break on British Motorways and then Texaco, the oil company with their forecourts.

16:14And I went to both those guys, those companies, and they said, yeah, great. Let's give it a shot. Same business model, that revenue share arrangement. And we went into two welcome breaks, two Texacos, and literally they were overnight successes. And we became very important parts of those stores. As a result of that, both companies said, okay, we're willing to roll out with you into as many stores as are economically viable. And that meant then I could then go and raise serious expansion capital to grow the company. So everything up until that point, Graham, and this was virtually a four-year journey, everything up until that point was proving the concept and getting that product market fit.

17:02Now I could go and raise money to actually start to build a company. So four years from starting, we then raised$4 million of private equity, funding from a mid-market buyout fund. By now, I got my first, I got some business angel investors. One of those became my chairman. I hired a COO, chief operations officer as well. And it was the three of us that were the initial team that raised that$4 million of private equity. The product market fit that you had with this business, how rare is that to happen? I mean, now obviously you've seen many other businesses and worked with many other businesses.

17:39It seems to me that not all of them have a product market fit like you had here. How special was it? I think it's, you know, if I look at a lot of companies these days, well, if I just take, for example, the whole question of what people look, you know, people look at Coffee Nation and they thought it was a vending business. And of course it wasn't. we created a third space, if you like, between vending on one side and high street coffee bars on the other. And we combined the convenience of vending with the premium quality of a coffee bar and created, in essence, a new category. But many, many times since I've been asked to look at, for example, vending businesses that wanted to use the same business model as Coffee Nation, but with another product.

18:22And the problem is that coffee, of course, is an habitual purchase. It's an habitual product. I've had five coffees today. You can't just say, okay, we use the same business model and the same principles as Coffee Nation used, and we'll sell something else, and it'll be a smash hit success. And I think this highlights the challenge of finding something that's really going to scale up and has got explosive growth potential. And I see a lot of companies, particularly in the consumer product space, where, you know, they'll get to maybe a million or a couple of million of revenues or, you know, even bigger, but people are buying to try something, you know, and it's not necessarily going to be something that they're going to buy every day of their lives.

19:04And that's the point. That's why this is a tough game, because you've got to find something that people are going to buy day in, day out. It becomes part of their, you know, becomes part of their routine. It becomes a norm. It becomes, you know, part of the fabric of society. And they're hard to find. You know, they're really, really hard to find. I think that one of the things that I'd say that I see a lot of is founders, you know, they're not finding a really big problem to solve. They're going into a marketplace that's already crowded. They're trying to differentiate. But by default, if you're differentiating in an area in a marketplace that already exists, you're immediately comparable to something that's there already.

19:44And, you know, you're, you know, makes it far more difficult. So product market fit and doing that, that work up front is vital. Don't try to, don't try to raise money until you've, until you've proved the concept and you've got people beating a path to your door and don't try and grow a company. Don't try and grow your business until you've proved the concept. Growth is a by-product of something that really works. And I think a lot of people don't spend enough time up front doing that hard work, working on the business, if you like, in those very early days. Coffee Nation's growth was dramatic.

20:20Its timing had been perfect. The business was growing as the coffee bar culture emerged in the UK. Starbucks may be everywhere now, but it only actually opened its first coffee shop in the UK in 1998. Another trend that Coffee Nation benefited from was the rapid expansion of convenience store chains like Tesco Express, which also started opening across the country and offered an ideal location for Coffee Nation to put its machines. Coffee Nation was easily able to convince shops that they should give space to its machines because the data from other retailers was so good. Its coffee was one of their best-selling products.

20:56A bigger challenge was actually keeping the machines working all the time and making sure they never had to close down. This meant Coffee Nation built its own internal maintenance team to look after the machines. In 2008, Martin Dawes oversaw the sale of Coffee Nation to private equity firm Milestone for£23 million. But that was far from the end of the story for Coffee Nation. Three years later, it was bought by Costa Coffee and became Costa Express. Then, in 2018, Coca-Cola bought Costa Coffee for£3.9 billion. It was a blockbuster deal, and a key reason Coca-Cola wanted to do the deal was that it wanted the Costa Express machines.

21:35So I'm keen to ask Martin Dawes, how did that sale come about in 2008? And does he regret it now, given all the growth since for the business? So, no, starting with the second question first, I didn't regret it. It was a good exit. The challenge, I think what I realised is that building a great business, I mean, you know, you and I both know this, the percentage of companies that, you know, startups that go on to a successful exit is incredibly small. I think something like 2 % of VC investments. It's very, very rare. So I didn't regret it. And I realized that growing a successful company and achieving a successful exit are two very different things.

22:19They're two very different things. And the challenge for us was that there was no obvious, there was a number of challenges there was no obvious peer group in terms of who to sell the company to or who would be the next investor so that presented some challenges but the biggest challenge really uh was that we were only just getting going and when private equity invested in coffee nation you know we were an early stage business concept proven rollout contracts literally ready to be signed but when they made their investment they needed an exit within five years and five years of course felt like a very long time but in reality it's a blink of an eye and if and if I look back building a company that is a genuine category defining category leading company this takes decades as you as you just mentioned with the whole journey of Coffee Nation to Costa Express to Coca-Cola it isn't a 10-year journey it's a 20 25 30-year journey.

23:20And that exit, you know, that exit did cause, you know, a big distraction. We were really just about, you know, we were just getting going, but they needed their exit. And would it be trade? Would it be, you know, another private equity firm? We came very close to selling to a US family office. And so when it came to my realisation, it looked like I was going to become a hired hand in a very large company because it looked like it was going to be a trade buyer I thought you know what that's just not for me I'm going to switch sides and exit with with private equity because I know then we're completely aligned so you know the category was in its infancy it brings on to another thing about actually one of the challenges of you know the scale-up journey in the UK which I know is is central to business leader and growth partners mandate that that was going to be sort of a follow-up question for me were you tempted to stay involved and what was the sort of defining reason for your decision?

24:16I think for me the um I didn't see myself if I took some cash out at that point great but then I was going to own paper in a in a very large company we actually came close in 2006 to selling to Coca-Cola but we were it was too early they wanted to buy half the company so it was it was early uh we had sort of 600 sites at that point um they wanted to call up they wanted to buy half the company have a call option on the other half but that didn't work for our private equity investors they wanted to clean you know 100 cash deal and it was at that point I thought you know what I'll actually switch to the sell side and exit with with PE but that you know as I say that plays to a bigger debate and discussion about you know building businesses over the long term in the UK what was that sales process like for you um emotionally and obviously you've touched on it there but exiting for any entrepreneur is a huge success and incredibly rare what what's your advice now for entrepreneurs and CEOs who may be going through that process or considering what and who is the right time to sell I think um well what I would say actually is uh it is it is a huge emotional journey I mean I'm working with with a founder at the moment and helping him on exactly that the whole point of piece of letting go and succession and when is the right time and so on and um you know i think really getting it right starts with on the way in not on the way out so look at the deal you're doing with your investors on the way in to growing the company because often the devil is in the detail um so you know that's vital i think starting the process early on as far out as possible advisors choosing advisors very very carefully you know i remember you know one of the things that looking back now was a challenge and you know that was about how coffee nation was being looked at you know we were being looked at really as a mature business in the exit process and i remember going through countless rounds of building bridges and all sorts of things with with our advisors and they said to me you know what martin profit and we were solidly profitable uh profit ignites value not potential and i swallowed that at the time.

26:30And of course, you know, multiple of EBITDA or multiple of revenue for a SaaS business or whatever. Yep, for sure. But if you've got a category defining business, again, you know, think about timescales. These things take a long time to build and actually potential does ignite value. But through that process, if for example, a customer, you know, if a rollout with a particular customer was taking longer or there was a delay or whatever, that then of course casts doubt in the minds of the potential buyer and so on and that then filtered down to the management team you know and and so it was it was just you know it was early it was very early in the in the in the journey and and a distraction really in some ways to management last question from me from coffee nation for look at what you're doing today but like just to follow up on what you just said there like what have you thought about what's happened to the business since which is basically just proven everything that you've just said um in terms of not only the expansion but the the incredible financial performance and profitability of that of that business yeah i mean i it's it's a great i'm incredibly proud uh when was it 2023 late 2023 the sunday times ran an article almost a full page on coffee nation and costa express and how the business model works and you know it's fresh beans and fresh milk and really reinforcing that same point again you know 27 years after i founded the business graham it's out there flourishing as costa express now, the same business model.

27:54Coffee Nation, we developed the touchscreen drink selection that you see now with Costa Express. It's been hugely successful. I think Costa Express made more money, the actual coffee machines, than the Costa coffee bars. And I remember back when I was rolling out Coffee Nation, we discovered that our best sites were doing the same annual turnover from 16, or when we doubled up, we had two machines together, 32 square feet. They were doing the same turnover as an average high street coffee bar so everything has been vindicated and it's been great i'm very pleased and proud and it's incredibly rare i can't you know it's hard and i'm you know uh it's hard to think of another perhaps innocent maybe uh for sure they've been equally successful but very very few consumer products and and brands have had that or consumer products have had that longevity um so it's it's great um set me up for the next phase of my life and it's all good.

28:50After leaving Copy Nation, Martin Dawes was keen to share what he had learned about building a business. He wrote a book and went into coaching and mentoring other chief executives and founders. I realised that so many people were making all the same sorts of mistakes that I'd made at the start. And for some strange reason, I thought people would have worked this stuff out. You know, for example, writing business plans at the start, which are a complete waste of time, you know, trying to raise money before you've proved the concept and so on. so I realized that people had you know there were a lot of lessons that that I'd gone through and that I could share the wisdom of my experience and help others not make those same mistakes that led then to me writing my book wake up and sell the coffee which is the journey of all about the journey of building coffee nation warts and all and all the failures and the and the missteps and mistakes we made along the way you know but also about how to design start from a good place and and design a high growth business and and put in place some of the learnings that I'd gone through.

29:46And that was my way of giving back to the entrepreneurial community. And also, this was 2014 when my book was published. At that time, I was talking about the need to get more, go beyond startup Britain into scale up Britain. And I know that's, as is the mission today with Business Leader. So that was part of it. Post Coffee Nation, I thought I'd do it all again and start another company. I looked at buying a business, et cetera. And honestly, it was simply the fact that so many people were coming to me and saying, would you help me with my business? And could you help with this, et cetera? And to start with, I resisted it.

30:25And then actually said, okay, I'll help. And I really enjoyed it. I thoroughly enjoyed it. And I did look for another company to start, but never found something quite as exciting and perhaps with the same potential. I think it was the challenge of the second smash it album or the follow-up novel you know it was the same sort of thing but I really enjoyed I was in a beautiful place because I built a great company that it was out there people were buying it every day I'd achieved a great successful exit I'd amassed a ton of experience and what a lovely position to be in to be able to now help other companies to do the same you touched on scale ups there what do you think is the biggest misconception about how you turn a promising business into a medium company where do the ceos and founders you speak to the moment need the most help um i think that at the early stage i think there's um there's two things i think often it's a it's a dash to raise money way too early uh rather than bootstrapping the company sure you need some cash you know whether that's family and friends or your own money or or maybe a small select band of business angels but they try to they try to raise before they've got real proof of concept, or they try to force people down a narrow business model, a path that really customers don't want to go down or whatever.

31:41So that proof of concepts and product market fit is just so vital. And I think also then getting that right and holding back and keeping your power to dry sort of thing before you then go to look to raise funding for expansion, I think that's the bit that in that area so many founders come unstuck you've got to prove your concept you need real traction and momentum to put yourself in the best possible position to do a really good deal with investors to set you up for success so I think you know that's what I'd say early on and I think that again goes back to that point I made around you know find a business idea that solves a really big problem.

32:26I think people often get, one thing that I do credit myself on, I made lots of so many mistakes in those early days, but I do credit myself with the ability to stand back and be brutally honest with myself and be objective and work on the business. And as opposed to just being a hamster wheel and trying to run harder and harder and harder I was able to stand back and and see you know what this isn't working I've got to change something you know and and and be honest with myself so I think that's often where a lot of people come unstuck is that when you're talking there would that come an example that be the shift that you did to to coffee beans and high quality coffee a sort of a flexibility in you stand by the vision your vision is still there but you're flexible on the details yeah I think I I think, well, the other thing is you've got to stay in the game to win it.

33:16You've got to be in it to win it, as they say. For me, it was ultimately about never, ever, ever giving up because I thought to myself, God, if somebody nails this and I've given up, then it's going to be, I've got the rest of my life to regret that. So the grand vision that really then started to take place. And once I realized we created a new market category, and that was defined by four little word self-serve gourmet coffee and that encapsulated everything we always stood for, putting great coffee wherever you are 24-7. That emerged. So it was start with a decent idea. You've got to be adaptable, flexible, work on the business, look for proof.

34:01You can't talk in generalizations. You've got to talk in specifics. Why is somebody going to buy my product day in, day out in their lives. And you need that proof, that evidence, and be willing to flex and go with the flow along the way and conserve money as well. When we raised our private equity funding, one of the things that they were impressed by was that we proved a lot with a small amount of money.

34:28You've been listening to the Business Leader podcast with me, Graham Roddick. Our producer is Anushka Tate. To get more of Business Leader's content, you can sign up for our weekly newsletter at businessleader.co.uk forward slash newsletters.

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