France’s Lagardère Travel Retail posts ‘excellent’ third quarter

The travel concession operator, which counts So! Coffee and licensed Costa Coffee stores among its foodservice portfolio, saw sales reach €1.39bn ($1.46bn) during the period

A Costa Coffee store in the Złote Tarasy shopping centre in Warsaw, Poland | Photo credit: Lagardère Travel Retail

Lagardère Travel Retail has achieved its highest-ever quarterly revenues, driven by strong sales growth for its foodservice brands across Europe. 

 

The Paris-based travel concession operator achieved 18% like-for-like sales growth in the third quarter to reach €1.39bn ($1.46bn), with revenues 26% higher over the first nine months of 2023 compared to the same period last year. 

 

Lagardère Travel Retail, which operates the So! Coffee chain alongside licensed Pret A Manger and Starbucks stores, reported particularly strong sales growth in France (11%), Italy (30%) and Poland (18%), a market where the group has seen increased activity following its acquisition of master franchise rights for Costa Coffee in February 2023. 

The deal, which covers approximately 140 Costa Coffee stores in Poland and Latvia, doubled the size of Lagardère Travel Retail’s foodservice operations in Poland and represented its first business in Latvia. 

Lagardère Travel Retail also highlighted ‘excellent momentum’ in North America and ‘solid growth’ across Asia, despite a slower-than-expected recovery in China. 

“After an exceptional summer period, particularly in the US and Europe, Lagardère Travel Retail achieved historical gross sales. In the first nine months of the year, the group thus achieved a turnover up by more than €900m ($947m) compared to 2022,” said Arnaud Lagardere, Managing Partner, the Lagardère Group. 

The group, which operates more than 1,150 foodservice outlets across 130 airports and 157 train stations in 25 countries, is set to further boosts its coffee shop footprint after being appointed by UK-based boutique café group EL&N as the exclusive franchisee for travel locations. 

The travel concession operator will support EL&N’s expansion to ‘new territories within the travel retail environment’, a move it said would ‘appeal to new profiles of consumers – young, tech savvy, fashionable women’. 

Lagardère Travel Retail is part of the Lagardère Group, which also operates in the publishing industry. The Lagardère Group achieved third quarter revenues of €2.2bn ($2.3bn), 63% of which came from its Lagardère Travel Retail division.