The only reason anyone in the UK has gone into a Costa Coffee since the year 2003 is because they were desperate for a crap. It’s not hard to see why. Their shops mix the upholstery of the Northern Line with coffee that tastes like dishwasher runoff. In good old 2015, no one walks down a high street stuffed with Prets, Starbucks and nice independent places with shiny baristas named Gabriel and thinks: “I know, let’s pretend we’re in an airport departure lounge and go to a Costa.”
Costa is the Noel Edmonds of coffee shops: once quite popular but now more likely to make you contemplate the inevitability of death. Which is presumably why it’s made an upbeat new Marks & Spencer-type coffee-porn advert. It’s all tight shots of glistening crockery, satisfying hisses from gleaming machinery, and hot air from some inane commentary. Meaningless truisms such as “who makes your flat white is what makes your flat white” and “hand-crafted to perfection” are used to persuade you that Costa is a place that really cares about coffee. Except, if you think about it, every coffee you’ve ever bought has been “hand-crafted”.
In fact, if the advert had said their coffee was “bum-crafted” people would be much less likely to glaze over and much more likely to buy one. Or, at the very least, pop in to see how they steam the milk. At the end of the advert we find out exactly “who” was making our flat white. It was a nice young lady named Yasmien from a Costa in St Andrews. I’m really sorry Yasmien, but when people go to a Costa it’s not for a flat white, it’s for a lumpy brown.
