Major café chains are expanding into Czech regional cities as the competitive Prague market is becoming increasingly crowded, writes Hospodářské noviny. Costa Coffee, with 21 locations in Prague, is planning to open its first outlet in Brno. The chain ranks third among café chains operating on the Czech market. It will compete with Starbucks, which opened in Brno last year. Costa also plans to develop a new concept called Costa Express.
The chain’s business unit manager, Aleš Fránek, told the paper that the self-service points will offer fresh coffee made by highly sophisticated machines. Costa started to implement them at petrol stations last year. In 2015, it wants to add an additional 45 Costa Expresses to its Czech network. The chain’s revenues rose by 12 percent y-o-y, according to Fránek.
McCafé, run by McDonalds, currently operates in 50 McDonalds restaurants and will soon be a fixture in all of the fast food chain’s 95 locations in the Czech Republic. CrossCafe, a purely Czech chain started in Pilsen, is also growing and looking for locations in other cities, having opened in Hradec Králové and Chomutov last year. New locations in Havířov and Olomouc are set to open in the the near-term.
