Barista Coffee opened its 6th Express outlet in Nugegoda Cool Planet and its 25th Barista outlet in Sri Lanka.
“When we started to think BIG, BOLD & DIFFERENT about serving coffee in a “Store Inside Store” concept in 2020 everything was a challenge – The concept, space management, layout, menu engineering, customer service standards, finding the “right consumer” in someone else’s business, and finding the right partner with the right set of business values”, said Dilupa Pathirana, CEO, Barista Coffee Lanka (Pvt) Ltd on his Linkedin post.
“However, after two years, we recognise the significant contribution our Express outlets made to our vision of becoming the undistributed leader and most preferred cafe chain in Sri Lanka by improving the brand accessibility and affordability. Express made us less imitable, less splintered, more famous, and more loved”, he added.
Barista opened its first cafe in the island nation in September 2002 and has ever since been one of the preferred international espresso-styled coffee chains in the country.
Due to the pandemic, tourism had taken a huge hit in the country. And just before the pandemic was the terrifying church bomb blasts, due to which there was a steep fall in visitors and travellers. In 2022, the country witnessed its worst economic crisis, followed by the collapse of the Government.
After multiple setbacks, tourism and business are slowly coming back to normalcy in 2023.
