Cafe Coffee Day equals Lara, is 400 not out

INDIA’s biggest fine coffee-cafe chain Cafe Coffee Day (CCD) will be 400 not-out on Wednesday. CCD’s 400th cafe, which director Naresh Malhotra calls the chain’s first authentic garden cafe, will be opened on the grounds of a renovated bungalow in Kolkata’s Upper Wood Street, off Theatre Road and near Chowringhee. 400 not-out was also the highest test score notched up by West Indies skipper Brian Lara, who recently expressed regret on his last tour of India that he had never played at Kolkata. Malhotra hopes that this 3,000-sqft lounge cafe, situated in an upmarket residential-cum-commercial area, will also attract office-goers and students from the nearby St Xavier’s College and La Martiniere. “Our 400th outlet will be a lounge-cafe which will serve light meals from our on-site kitchen, in both the Indian and Continental style, in addition to the best of coffees and snacks, biryani, ricefry, kheema, salads, pav bhaji, burgers, pastas, samosas and sandwiches.” CCD aims to expand briskly in eastern India by adding three cafes a month to its existing 26. “We plan to open cafes in Kharagpur (near IIT), Siliguri, Gangtok, Shantiniketan (near the Viswa Bharati University), Burdwan and Asansol. Eastern India is one of our focus areas in CCD’s plans to reach the 500-cafes mark by the middle of this calendar.” However, CCD will be returning to its base in Bangalore to set up in April what Malhotra calls its second authentic 4,000-sqft garden-cafe on Old Madras Road near Raheja’s Infiniti Complex and across the street from the city’s largest Big Bazaar. Asked whether the anticipated entry of the world’s biggest coffee-cafe chain Starbucks had anything to do with CCD’s frenetic expansion, Malhotra quipped: “We brew our plans independently of what others propose.” A few weeks ago, CCD opened via the franchise-route its first cafe in Pakistan in Karachi’s Zamzama Commercial Area, famous for its designer outlets and vibrant cafe culture. CCD plans to open 25 more cafes in Pakistan within the next few months. CCD also has two cafes in Austria, one near the Opera House in Vienna and the other on the university campus. CCD is a division of the Amalgamated Bean Coffee Trading (ABCTL), a Rs 400-crore conglomerate, which not just grows coffee, but retails it in a packaged and cafe format. To finance the ongoing expansion, ABCTL negotiated a $20-million equity investment by Sequoia Capital last July and firmed up a $20-million IFC loan a few months later.

courtesy:economictimes

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