In 2018 Coca-Cola acquired Costa Coffee, a well loved global brand that originated in the UK. Considering key trends around automation, no-touch solutions and increasing labor costs, we initiated a project to deliver Costa quality with an autonomous retail platform.
The Coca-Cola engineering and innovation team partnered with Costa management to develop a cutting edge experience that would roll out globally. As the design director responsible for bringing the experience to market, I worked with in-house engineering and world-class agencies to deliver ID, UX and UI design; Design that would extend the Costa brand's warm, engaging personality in existing markets, while clearly communicating the benefits of contemporary, quality, crafted coffee in new markets.
We landed on the creative theme of 'Counter Culture' to deliver a design with clear, familiar coffee-preparation cues. To this we added highly-visible robotic theatre to invite user engagement. The concept of theatre informed how the robotics would move Costa cups around a curated 'stage' complete with back-of-house for storage of coffee 'props', wings where espresso is prepared, intelligent adaptive lighting that highlights the performance and an innovative front-stage delivery mechanism so that the only part a consumer touches is their custom-made, lidded beverage.
