Amanda Moss / 31 March 2025 / Categories: Product and Brands, Brands, High Street Brands

Why I Gave Up On Costa Coffee

the bait then switch brand

We used to be a nation of shopkeepers now it feels more like we are a nation of coffee shop keepers.

And our high streets that used to be punctuated with a whole host of independent individual businesses, oh now are all identical With a Starbucks a Costa Coffee a café Nero and a Pret A Manger our only options. I am the only one this winds up? You go somewhere new, take a drive out; check somewhere you’ve never been before out and it looks the same, all the same brands and businesses as home.

I gave up drinking £3.50 plus cups of barista style coffee a few years ago. I knew a regular habit like this, the cost adds up. Then the pandemic and working from home I saved even more money with a change in my habits. I decided I’d stop the small every day purchases I really didn’t need once I returned to work.

Perrier water and clever TV advertising got my mother in the 1970s and then Evian and San Peligrino got me paying over the odds for water in the 1990s and 2000 so now I don’t succumb to daily consuming I have personally rebranded as rip off habits.

I know there are millions of you saying I am not giving up my coffee. Pret A Manger even have a £5 month loyalty membership, yes you heard that right, you pay them an extra £5 per month as well as shopping with them to get your coffee fix a bit cheaper. I’ve researched the program and it works out you have to be ordering at least 3 cups of Pret coffee per day to make it worthwhile and who does that except maybe TV and film set runners.

I don’t like Costa the brand owned by Whitbread the brewery until 2019 when Coca Cola swooped in and bought the chain for a whopping £3.9 billion. The snack offering isn’t remotely healthy and even though they do give calorie count which I think is good, nearly £4 for a processed muffin I think is daylight robbery.

Coca Cola the perfect new owner for a business relying on the consumer effectively becoming addicted to the product.

In 2021 I was ecstatic to read the announcement with the help of a Finnebrogue partnership Costa were introducing a vegan bacon bap to it’s snack offering.

Costa are just there, like Starbucks because they can afford to take retail units on high streets too expensive for small independents which I find depressing when I want to see something different exciting and passionate not grim, windowless and the same.

So the arrival of the Costa vegan sandwich on their menu was truly welcomed. I did try the sandwich a while ago, I was encouraged as it is a good lunch option for me when I am on the road and the plant based choices are limited. Unfortunately I haven’t actually found a Costa where I can buy it. My friend likes to stop at the Costa drive through for a cup of decaf so I’ve asked myself about the vegan bacon sandwich which is NEVER available, in the end I stopped asking.

The naked without the oink vegan plant based sandwich is £3 if you get your hands on it. It’s not actually too bad if you need a quick plant based lunch option. I’ve eaten one, probably tried to buy it 15 times.

I stopped for the not bacon sandwich on the motorway, I was on business, late and hadn’t had breakfast. Why I had to have a lemon muffin instead.