Franchise giant Retail Food Group has significantly boosted its roasting capacity with the acquisition of coffee chain Gloria Jean's Coffees for $163.5 million.
The company also owns Michel's Patisserie, Esquires, BB's, Coffee Guy, Cafe2U, Donut King, Brumby's Bakery, Pizza Capers Gourmet Kitchen and Crust Gourmet Pizza.
The acquisition includes 800 franchised outlets across 40 countries, and also includes a wholesale coffee business that operates two state-of-the-art coffee roasting facilities, one in Sydney and the other in Los Angeles.
RFG CEO Tony Alford says that the Gloria Jean’s Coffees business genuinely encompasses the “farm to cup” story, including direct farm sourcing of green beans which are then roasted within the group’s Australian and American roasting and packaging facilities, for distribution to the world-wide franchise network and third party customers.
“RFG already maintains a significant wholesale coffee roasting business, whose through-put will increase three-fold to 4.5m kilograms when combined with that of the target’s. As well, RFG’s Brand System coffee supply requirements will essentially be ‘future proofed’ by the addition of two supplementary roasting facilities that also afford a platform for export trade,” he said.
“The acquisition also offers access to the closed (patented) Caffitaly capsule delivery system, and a strong capsule distribution trade augmented by exclusive supply into a major national supermarket retailer. The Caffitaly system is currently represented by 540,000 machines within the Australian market, but is factored to grow significantly given the increasing popularity of the ‘in home’ espresso coffee experience”.
Gloria Jean's outlets will continue to offer its own coffee blends and flavours.
