Costa Coffee is the latest retailer to increase wages for their staff following Chancellor George Osborne’s announcement of the new National Living Wage in July.
The multinational coffeehouse company announced on Wednesday that their 12,500 baristas would earn a minimum of £7.40 an hour and £8.20 in London, around 20p above the Living Wage, which will come into effect in April 16.
Chris Rogers, Managing Director of Costa claimed that the rise wasn’t prompted by the government’s announcement or retailers such as Starbucks and Lidl planning to raise their minimum wage levels as well.
“We’ve been planning for some time to look at the pay rates because we think it’s really important our team share in the success of our business. It’s not a knee-jerk reaction.”
“Underpins our growth plans, because people are such an important ingredient in our business, so the better people we have, the better experience our customers will have.” continued Chris Rogers.
Leisure group Whitbread, the company that owns the Costa chain, warned previously that higher costs would come as a result of minimum wage increases. Chris Rogers said it would be difficult to calculate company costs from the rise, but also cited that Costa was making better use of technology and productivity in order to boost profits.
