New flavour brews up strong returns for Costa Coffee

COSTA Coffee was again Whitbread's star performer in an update from the leisure company yesterday, as it revealed a new product had helped to notch up another jump in sales.

The launch of a strong "flat white" coffee at the end of January boosted Costa, with fourth- quarter sales growth of 9.5 per cent outstripping the 6.7 per cent in Q3.

This helped Whitbread, which also runs the Premier Inn budget hotels chain, increase group like-for-like sales 3 per cent in the fourth trading quarter to 18 February.

Whitbread, which this week named former EasyJet boss Andy Harrison as its incoming chief executive, said there was a big improvement at Premier Inns, with sales growth of 3.1 per cent, against a 1.7 per cent decline in Q3.

It was a more subdued picture at its pub restaurant arm, where the recent bad weather saw sales growth slow to 1.3 per cent from 2.3 per cent in the third trading quarter.