Coffee shop chain Caffe Nero will soon be serving late-night web surfers after brewing up a deal with easyInternetCafé, it was announced today.
Under the agreement, Caffe Nero will occupy the 1,600 sq ft (150 sq m) ground floor of easyInternetCafé’s flagship store in High Street Kensington, west London, later this summer.
The high-street coffee chain will replace a smaller Nescafé concession operating in the store.
Caffe Nero will keep the same opening hours – 7am to 11pm – as Nescafé, and it hopes to benefit from the added footfall of easyInternetCafé’s 18,000 users per week.
The deal is Caffe Nero’s first with easyInternetCafé, which was set up by easyJet founder Stelios Haji-Ioannou and offers cheap access to the web.
EasyInternetCafé has six sites in London as well as branches in Edinburgh, Glasgow and Manchester.
It also has 23 global outlets, and Caffe Nero said there was potential to expand to other sites both in the UK and abroad if the west London venture was a success.
Chairman Gerry Ford added: “Joining forces with the easyInternetCafé chain is an exciting development in Caffe Nero’s expansion.
“This is the first of a number of initiatives in which we hope to explore the considerable opportunities for the further development of the Caffe Nero brand.”
Shares in Caffe Nero, the UK’s largest independent coffee chain with 109 sites, jumped 1.5p to 30.5p on the news.
Haji-Ioannou opened the first easyInternetCafé, then called easyEverything, in June 1999, following the popularity of internet flight booking at easyJet.
Earlier this year, Haji-Ioannou announced he was quitting the no-frills airline to concentrate on other ventures.
EGi News 17/06/02
