Geoff Box opens Edinburgh drive-through coffee shop

AN AUSTRALIAN entrepreneur has pipped national chain Costa to the post by opening Edinburgh’s first drive-through coffee shop.

Geoff Box and staff at the drivethrough coffee kiosk. Picture: Neil Hanna

Geoff Box, who moved to the UK to work for engineering giant Honeywell, opened his first Coffee Drive branch on Duddingston Park South last week.

Box aims to open a further two outlets in Edinburgh in the next year before looking to franchise the business into other areas.

He said: “In Australia, we had drive-through everything – fast food shops, bottle shops [off licences] and coffee shops. I couldn’t understand why people have to park their cars and then walk into a shop to get coffee when they could have a drive-through instead.”

Box launched his company after securing a £25,000 loan from DSL Business Finance in Glasgow, a community development finance institution that lends to small firms finding it hard to access bank lending.

News of Coffee Drive’s opening comes after Costa last year outlined plans to launch a drive-through shop in Edinburgh.