India’s Cafe Coffee Day shuts 280 stores

Indian coffee chain Cafe Coffee Day shuttered 280 outlets between April and June due to low profitability and potentially rising costs.

The firm, which now operates 1480 outlets, has also reported a decline in average daily sales from 15,739 cups to 15,445 cups during the period. This was counterbalanced by an uptick in Coffee Day’s vending machine count from 49,397 to 59,115 units year on year.

“Export operations have been temporarily stopped due to lower margins and higher working capital requirement and around 280 outlets are closed during the quarter based on various factors including the profitability, future increase in major expenses,” said a spokesperson for the firm.

The firm has struggled since the apparent suicide of founder VG Siddhartha a year ago. Siddhartha founded Coffee Day Enterprises in the late 1990s, years before Starbucks made its Indian debut, building a network of 1700 outlets – 10 times the size of Starbucks.