DEAL STRUCK IN STARBUCKS’ BACK YARD

THE bosses of Coca-Cola and Costa first met over a cup of coffee – in US rival Starbucks’s backyard.

Alison Brittain, left, Whitbread’s chief executive, met fellow Brit and Coca-Cola counterpart James Quincey, above, in May in Seattle, where Starbucks opened its first coffee shop in 1971.

The pair were put in touch by Whitbread chairman Adam Crozier, a friend of 53-year-old Quincey’s, while they were both attending the annual Microsoft CEO Summit. The secretive gathering is run by Bill Gates and attracts bigwigs such as Amazon boss Jeff Bezos, Warren Buffett and Netflix chief Reed Hastings. The deal was codenamed ‘Project Del Sol’ by Coke in a pun on Spain’s Costa del Sol holiday coast. The Whitbread team used ‘Project Crimson’ in a nod to Costa’s red branding.

Writing in a blog online, Quincey said: ‘It’s very important to me that we let Costa be Costa.’