I've been spending some time in the UK lately and Costa Coffee is everywhere. I don't understand how or why. Their coffee is utterly abysmal. When I'm at university, I go for a 35 minute round walk just to grab a decent coffee that isn't from one of the two Costa Coffee stores on site. And the prices for that swill...
Back when I was in the job they opened a Costa Coffee at FHQ.
We quickly discovered it wasn't all that and was eye weteringly expensive, so we got our coffee elsewhere (free at the Mickey D drive thru) and Costalot were gone within a year.
A related and mildly amusing tale. McDonald's would give is free coffee as they liked having uniformed dibble wandering in and out the place. Fair enough. One morning two of the boys from firearms were at the drive thru and the lad at the window said to my mate Del, "excuse me officer, theres an armed robbery going on inside." Next thing you know hapless armed robber with a BB gun is staring down the barrels of two very real SIG P226's wielded by two very pissed off gun monkeys who were missing out on their coffee.
Perfect timing, and they went back later and got their coffee so a happy ending.