Caffè Nero sees strong first half performance

Premium coffee house brand Caffè Nero has announced strong trading for its half-year (June 2022-November 2022) in the UK, including strong like for like sales growth.

For the first half of its current financial year FY23 (June 2022-November 2022), the brand reported sales in the UK of £150m, averaging 104% of pre-pandemic levels and an increase of 17% for the same period in 2021.

They also reported that sales during the key Christmas trading month of December 2022 reached 110% of pre-pandemic levels, a 9.5% like for like increase compared to December 2021. The UK business achieved record weekly sales during w/c 5 December 2022 of £7.9m, and served 7.8 million UK customers during the month.

Despite a challenging period for costs, the family owned and run coffee house brand also opened seven new stores in the UK during the half year, and experienced a notable and encouraging increase in several of its new sales channels. Its delivery business benefited from adding new partners Deliveroo and Just Eat to existing partner Uber Eats to generate £3.5m of revenue. Likewise, its Coffee At Home business for the same period achieved sales of £1.5m. This was supported by a new strategic partnership with Waitrose and continuing momentum from its own channels and retail partnerships with Amazon, Ocado, Sainsbury’s and the Ambassador Theatre Group.

At a group level, Caffè Nero had 1,023 stores across 10 countries at the end of the first half of the financial year (June 2022 –Nov 2022) with sales of £231m, an increase of 20% like for like against the previous year.

Caffè Nero founder and group CEO, Gerry Ford commented: “We’ve seen a very encouraging first half of our financial year. Despite significant inflationary pressures which have continued to mount since June, we have demonstrated strong cost control and delivered solid sales growth. We traded at 110% of pre-pandemic sales in December and had record weekly sales. That is a testament to the hard work and outstanding service from our store teams as well as a very well received Christmas menu with our customers. We expect to see sales continue to improve further over the coming weeks and months.”