Why Greggs is now bigger than Costa

The UK coffee market is splitting in two. Greggs has just overtaken Costa as the country's largest coffee operator - on the back of a £2.40 latte - while premium names like Blank Street and WatchHouse keep raising money and growing revenue. Everyone in between (Starbucks, Costa, Caffè Nero) is losing money and share. We look at why: it's less a shift in taste than a shift in costs, as running a genuinely good cup gets cheaper just as running a cheap one gets harder.

Also, in this week’s issue, I look at the creeping use of "basis points" in foodservice reporting - a unit built for exact, contractual numbers like interest rates, now being applied to like-for-like sales and food cost percentages that were never precise enough to justify it. I make the case for why the industry should stick to plain percentages.

Read the full briefing.