On October 9, 2026, Coca-Cola was again exploring a sale of Costa Coffee after abandoning an earlier process amid weak private-equity interest, according to Semafor reporting — the second attempt to unwind one of the most debated acquisitions in the company’s history.
Coca-Cola bought Costa from Whitbread for $5.1 billion in 2018, a drinks giant’s declaration that it needed a hot-beverage platform as soda growth slowed. The logic was never absurd — coffee is a daily habit with global headroom — but the execution has fought the thesis ever since. Costa holds some 2,700 outlets in Britain and Ireland, a high-street estate carrying high-street costs into a market where consumers watch every pound, and the chain lost nearly £20 million across 2023 and 2024. Inside a company whose genius is brands, bottling economics and distribution margins, a café chain’s landlords, barista wages and morning-peak staffing are a foreign language spoken at quarterly meetings.
The first sale process died of the answer it received: private equity looked at the estate, the losses and the consumer squeeze, and bid accordingly. Reviving the process means either the price expectation has moved, a strategic buyer has appeared, or Coca-Cola’s patience has run out — three doors that lead to quite different valuations. Coffee retail’s premium years were built on the assumption that the daily cup was price-proof; the cost-of-living era has repriced that assumption along with everything else on the high street.
What a sale would settle
An exit at a disciplined price would close the argument that a bottling empire should own café doors, and free capital for the brand-and-bottler model Coca-Cola demonstrably runs better than anyone. Holding Costa means fixing it in public, quarter by quarter. Either way, the 2018 cheque has already written its lesson into the company’s strategy documents. GlobeNews9’s Business & Technology Desk will follow the process as bidders and terms emerge.
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