Costa bans cash and sitting in its cafes

Costa Coffee, which has three outlets in Grantham, has today become cashless and become a takeaway only.

CEO Jill McDonald said: “As we continue to follow the advice and recommendations from the Government and health authorities, we have made several changes to our stores to help support in social distancing.

“We know that you will understand we are doing this because we believe it’s the best and safest way to continue to serve great Costa Coffee.”

The popular chain, which has branches in Grantham at the Isaac Newton Centre, Harlaxton Road and railway station says it will for now….

• All stores will be cashless and will only accept card payments.
• All seating areas will be closed for customer use in stores to support government guidance on social distancing, however, our toilets will continue to be open for customers.
• We will serve all drinks in takeaway cups and food in takeaway packaging, ‘dine-in’ crockery will not be available.
• We won’t be able to serve you your drink in a reusable cup in our stores but we will honour our 25p discount if you bring in your own cup.
• All stores will temporarily remove newspapers as we cannot clean them in between each customer handling them.
• All stores will also have a more limited food range but we will be sure to stock Costa Coffee favourites and make sure we have choice available for all dietary requirements and preferences.
• All Drive-Thru lanes will remain open as usual for those customers in vehicles but internal seating areas will be closed.
• Our Costa Express machines continue to operate up and down the country as normal for those customers on-the-go. We continue to work closely with our partners to ensure they maintain the highest standard of cleaning and hygiene.

To help minimise the spread of the virus, they are following the latest Government recommendations and asking any team member with symptoms to stay home and self-isolate for at least seven days.

If a team member lives with someone else and they have symptoms, then we have requested that they stay home and follow the Government recommendations for household isolation.

Ms McDonald continued: “Whilst some of these changes will feel quite disruptive we believe they are the right thing to do for our customers and store teams. We are especially mindful of the move to takeaway only and ask that customers dispose of and recycle their Costa Coffee packaging responsibly.

“We will continue to recycle cups and welcome you dropping them back into store, if possible. We thank you in advance for your support and assure you that these changes are temporary and will be regularly reviewed.”