Meet Jamie -

Head of Franchise

Joining us in the middle of the pandemic with closed stores to moving to the middle east and opening new stores monthly, we spend time getting to know Jamie Awdry our Head of Franchise a little better.

How long have you been with Costa Coffee?
3 wonderful years, I started in Covid 2020 when all of our shops were shut.

What attracted you to Costa?
The opportunities that exist, you can move from a store role to an international role, you can chose to work for the brand or even move to one of our partners and franchisees.

What do you love about Costa?
We have amazing people all working towards the same goal, our store teams are our personality and show such care in every drink the make.

What did you know about Costa before you joined?
A lot less than I do now, I did not realise the scale of the business and truthfully thought it was just a super popular UK business. I didn’t know we had stores and machines across the world or that we were owned by Coca Cola.

What’s the best career decision you’ve ever made?
Taking risks when they have presented themselves to me, I have lived in 5 countries across the last 20 years all due to grabbing opportunities no matter how small they seemed at the time. Always have time for a casual conversation.

What’s a mistake you made early on in your career and what did you learn from it? I once accidentally delisted all tobacco and cigarette products from 400 petrol stations for an entire weekend as I hadn’t checked my data and formula properly before updating the system. This was in the early 2000s when 40% of the UK population smoked! As they say check twice, execute once.

What's the biggest misconception people have about your position?
People believe all I do is fly around opening shops and getting in photos! I spent a lot of time with our franchisees and partners to ensure the Costa brand is well represented and respected across our markets. 

What are you currently excited about in your job?
Being able to open new Costa stores in countries, area, cities and towns were customers have never seen us before. Customers trying our coffee for the first time always comment how amazing it is compared to the weak milky mess that is Starbucks.

What part of Costa’s ambition to inspire the world to love great coffee excites you the most? That I personally can deliver it, I look after a region of 11 trading countries with so much potential, we can smash our growth as long as we listen to customers.

What skills outside of work do you think help you in work?
I support and work with young people in the foster care system, their experiences help me stay considered and rounded. Providing guidance and life experiences to them helps me ensure everything we do is considered.

What advice would you give your younger self?
Do it (whatever it is), don’t sit back and hope things happen. You are your number one advocate so push yourself as far as you can.

As a child what was your dream job?
I always fancied being an air traffic controller or a computer programmer.

Back to results