Costa Express

Costa Coffee is a British coffeehouse chain, founded in London in 1971. Costa introduced its innovative Costa Express machines in 2011, which were rolled out across the UK in a variety of locations. These state-of-the-art self-serve coffee bars combine Costa’s freshly ground Signature Blend beans, real milk and cutting-edge technology to deliver delicious drinks on-the-go.

Costa Express machines are state-of-the-art self-serve coffee bars, powered by Internet of Things (IoT) technology.

Costa Express approached One Beyond to provide expert technical staff for Costa Coffee’s development team, through their Continuous Development Teams service. “We chose One Beyond because of the quality of the relationship. We found we could talk exactly about what we needed and get responses geared towards those needs,” explains Eric Plue, Head of Software Engineering at Costa Express. “Throughout the years, as needs have emerged, I’ve found that I am able to get on the phone and speak with them about our needs for engineering talent and they’ve been able to deliver every time.”

With the help of One Beyond, Costa Express was able to add technical expertise to its Continuous Development team as and when they needed to, overcoming their tech hiring challenges so that they could focus on delivering great coffee and a great customer experience through their self-serve machines. “We’ve been able to collaborate on both short-term and mid-term projects, and once they’re complete, they immediately start to prove a return on investment”, Eric says.