IN THE UK LARGEST OPERATING
Established in 2012, Scoffs Group is now Costa Coffee’s largest UK franchised partner with 114 stores and is aiming high. Scoffs’ CEO and founder Antony Tagliamonti revealed that his ambition is to reach 400 stores across the country within the next five years.
Antony Tagliamonti started his entrepreneurial journey at a young age. At 16 he was a driver and two years later became a franchisee. In 2012, with his new company, he purchased three Costa Coffee stores in Essex and East London, followed by a further five in Norfolk and Suffolk in 2013.
We have restructured the business, aiming to expand by a minimum of 20 stores per year.
Within five years, the group had expanded to a total of 31 stores, and in 2018, an additional 57 stores were acquired in the south of England. In 2022, 20 equity stores were acquired from Costa Coffee in Cornwall. Today, Scoffs is trading from over 114 stores nationwide, with that number continuing to increase.
Scoffs impressive growth has not gone unnoticed and the company, as well as its founder, have received awards on numerous occasions. These include the ‘Costa Innovation Award’ for Costa in Crate Loughton, won for the first Costa to be built within a shipping container in the UK. The Annual Costa Awards have also recognised Scoffs Group for Progressive Community Engagement as well as naming the business Costa Foundation Fundraiser of the Year. Antony Tagliamonti himself was shortlisted by the British Franchise Association for the coveted HSBC Best-in-Class Multi-Unit Leader Award.
Restructured and empowered
Antony admits that the pandemic was a big challenge but one that was handled well and the group is now primed for further expansion. “We
have restructured the business, aiming to expand by a minimum of 20 stores per year.”
COO Paul Turner explains that what has helped Scoffs to stay strong is not only the fact that the company is Costa Coffee’s largest partner in the UK but also that significant investment has been made in the company’s teams.
Paul, who joined the group in 2022, has himself helped to move the business to new heights. With over 20 years’ experience in retail and F&B including Costa Coffee UK, he has undertaken a groupwide strategic review of the business structure and instigated necessary changes. As part of this endto-end review undertaken across each department, the group can absorb large-scale acquisitions as well as pursue organic growth.
“Over the last two years, the support centre structure and our head office structure have been completely transformed. We’ve simplified our core operations, given tools to the businesses to enable them to enhance their performance on a day-by-day basis with a focus on operational standards. This then obviously yields positive benefits in terms of our operational capacity and performance,” he says.
We plan for over 600 people to go through Coffee Excellence, Brand Excellence and Barista Maestro programmes this year.
Antony agrees: “The tools and support we provide to our teams make them feel more empowered to deliver the results with a higher degree of clarity, and a laser focus on delivering the best customer experience. Our external and internal metrics demonstrate that we are not only recognised as a high performing franchise partner but doing better than other partners within the system and the brand owner themselves. The tools and the structure we’ve implemented over the last two years have really focused us and enabled the business to continue to grow.”
People’s business
The company puts great emphasis on supporting its employees and when it comes to staff development, Scoffs Group are also leaders in the field: at all levels, its team members benefit from access to a vocational training program, delivered exclusively for Scoffs Group staff members.
Antony highlights the role of store managers. “With a capable store manager, the ‘number 1 leader in the business’ as we call them, provided with the right tools and the right level of support, you don’t have any issues. Finding the right store managers is 90% of our success.”
The company prides itself on fostering a culture
of recognition and reward, evidenced by its annual black-tie awards event, which is a celebration of the team’s success. Scoffs has its award-winning Apprenticeship Programme in place, reopened its first Academy in Southampton and has plans to reopen Walthamstow and Tiverton this year. “We plan for over 600 people to go through Coffee Excellence, Brand Excellence and Barista Maestro programmes this year. This forms part of our umbrella internal L&D strategy ‘Scoffs trained’.”
Operating in the local environment, Scoffs stores are embedded in local communities and CSR is a strong element in the business. Needless to say, Scoffs is also strongly engaged in making its practices and operations more sustainable –plastic cutlery has been removed from its stores and the company is now moving to electric or hybrid cars across its fleet, says Antony.
“We have reduced CO2 emissions in 2023, despite an increase of 21 stores versus 2022. Within every refurbishment and refitting of a newly acquired store, measures are taken to make the asset more environmentally friendly.” Scoffs uses trusted partners within the process, such as project management company Cooper Poile and RAB Retail, a specialist property consultant, who help to manage and grow Scoffs property portfolios and new-site acquisition.
Primed for growth
Innovation is central to what makes Scoffs Group stand out from other franchisees. This factors into all aspects of the business, from its approach to property to its team structure and the roles within. Bespoke and scalable processes have been created such as Scoffs ‘ways of working’ which distils Scoffs’ and Costa’s best practices into a digital platform supporting staff to deliver the best performance.
Scoffs has also embraced the necessary digital solutions and created an in-house analytics team that provide the company’s front line and department heads with the necessary reports and bespoke dashboards, allowing for a better understanding of what is happening within the business, in real time, by the hour, day and week, in order to ensure a quick response.
Antony affirms that Scoffs is ahead of the game in terms of using AI and advanced technology across
its stores. “We have invested in our drive-thru line technology to improve communication and increase efficiency within this segment of stores. Similar metrics have been applied to measure the movement of customers through stores. By investing in the technology, we provide tools for our teams to make the customer’s experience as quick and pleasant as possible, which in turn will generate revenue for the business.”
Looking back at his journey from one store to the UK’s largest Costa Coffee franchisee,
Antony affirms that hard work and unfaltering determination have made the company what it is today. “You have to think big, to have the aspiration to grow. But it’s absolutely impossible to do it alone. You need to have a team around you that is aligned with your vision and your goal. You also need to tolerate risk – nothing comes without risk.”
Looking at Scoffs Group now, being able to take risks at the age of 16 has clearly served Antony very well.
