Cafe Coffee Day to open 20 outlets in Punjab

Café Coffee Day, with a turnover of Rs 300 crore, has a target of 50 per cent growth in 2006-07 by opening 500 more outlets in the country, of which 20 will be in Punjab.

Naresh Malhotra, director, Amalgamated Bean Coffee Trading Company Ltd (ABCTCL), the parent company of Café Coffee Day, said: "At present we have six outlets in Punjab and keeping in mind the response in the state, the company has decided to open 20 more in the current financial year. Apart from Punjab, outlets will be opened in Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu & Kashmir and Rajasthan in the northern region of the country."

In addition, Café Coffee Day will introduce initiatives for the customer and the coffee industry that include continued expansion and penetration into new locations for Highways Cafes and Drive-Thru cafes, for which CCD has tied up with all leading petroleum companies, he revealed.

To achieve the target of 50 per cent growth, Malhotra revealed that CCD would launch faster customer-table service in which an advanced level wireless retail automation system (LERA) will be deployed in cafés to speed up order processing and billing, plus tracking of a customer's likes and preferences through past billing patterns.

On the social angle, Malhotra claimed that employment opportunities to the physically challenged through a special employee programme for the "Speech and Hearing Impaired" would be provided by CCD. With the help of "Enable India," an NGO, CCD will train and orient physically challenged employees to get integrated into the work culture.