Barista at IOC outlets soon

The company plans to open 20 smaller coffee kiosks starting this September, at select petrol pumps on highways under its tie-up with Indian Oil Corporation.

"We are opening around 15-20 smaller coffee kiosks on the highways. The first one would open in September on the Delhi-Chandigarh highway in Karnal," CEO of the company Partha Dattagupta said.

Barista's contribution to the outlets will be around Rs 7-8 lakh, he said adding the other kiosks would come up on the Pune-Mumbai, Bangalore-Chennai and Bangalore-Mysore highways.

The kiosks named 'Barista on the go' would be spread over 700 square feet area with sitting arrangement and a take away option. This new retail format would contribute an approximate of 10 to 15 per cent in the next two years to the company's top line.

Dattagupta said Barista would open another four Barista Creme in this fiscal, one more in Delhi and the others in Mumbai and Bangalore and expects to add around 50 per cent to its revenues from these outlets.

Announcing the company's expansion plans during this fiscal, Dattagupta said Barista would open 60 outlets in the country with an investment of around Rs 22 lakh per outlet.

Dattagupta said the company would focus on the south Indian market and of the 60 outlets about 25 would be in this region.

"Of the 120 outlets across the country only about 12 are in south India while more than 40 are in Delhi and NCR. So our focus this year will be on increasing our presence in this region," he said.

Barista would also focus on the western and eastern regions and open outlets in Goa, Guwahati, Surat, Kohlapur, Nagpur, Nasik, Bhubaneshwar, Ranchi, Indore and Surat.

"The focus is on domestic expansion at the moment. We already have three outlets in Dubai and one in Sri Lanka".

All investments for the outlets would be done by the company itself and there were no plans for IPO, he said adding that Barista was still deliberating on accepting the franchisee route and it would take another six-eight months for that.

The Barista Creme outlets would have a different range of food and beverages than is available in the Barista Espresso bars. " We will serve a whole new range of cold beverages and original single coffees like the Jamaincan Blue, Costa Rican and Keynan and fresh salads in these outlets," he said.

He said Barista was keen on entering IT parks and tie-ups with other big companies like AirTel for its promotion. Barista had earlier partnered with Ford Ikon and MTV by selling out its space as part of its promotion plans.