ASA Adjudication on Costa Ltd

Ad

A national press ad, for a coffee shop, stated "HAND MADE BY BARISTAS NOT BUTTON PUSHERS Some places make coffee by pressing a button. At Costa, our Baristas make every cup by hand. We happen to think it's better that way. Costa WE MAKE IT BETTER".

Issue

Co-Go Coffee to Go (Co-Go) and two members of the public believed the ad, in particular the claim "HAND MADE BY BARISTAS NOT BUTTON PUSHERS", was misleading, because they understood that Costa Coffee used coffee-making machines, which required buttons to be pressed.

CAP Code (Edition 11)

Response

Costa said the aim of the ad was to highlight the differences between the process they used to make coffee, which relied on the manual skill and training of their baristas and the automatic process used by some other coffee outlets.  They said all modern espresso coffee making required the use of a machine to some extent, because a powerful pump was required to force water through the coffee grounds in order to extract the highest quality coffee.  They said, unlike some other coffee outlets, they used traditional semi-automatic espresso machines in their stores, which relied on the skill of their baristas to control the coffee-making process from start to finish.

Costa explained that their baristas controlled and maintained a separate coffee grinder to ensure that the coffee beans were ground to a precise level of consistency, and selected the correct amount of ground beans for the particular beverage ordered by the customer.  They then followed a four-step tamping process to ensure the coffee was level and compressed inside the portafilter, and the correct amount of water was then added to the beans by the barista stopping and starting the water pump using a combination of a manual timing system and calibrated auto switches.  Costa said their baristas would check the flow of espresso extraction and colour of the foam, which formed the top of the espresso, adjusting the level of coffee grind as necessary, before steaming or frothing the milk to ensure that the heated milk had the optimum texture and consistency.

Costa argued that the manual process controlled by their baristas was significantly different from the fully automated process used by some other coffee outlets, which relied on 'super automatic' or 'bean-to-cup' espresso machines.  Those  machines ground the bean and tamped the ground coffee internally, regulated the water flow with pre-set buttons only and emptied the coffee grounds into a waste unit for next use.  Costa said, whilst it was necessary for their baristas to use a button to operate the machine which heated and pumped the water, this was part of a manual process controlled by their baristas, as opposed to a fully automated process controlled by those espresso machines, where the only action required by the operator was to press the button to start the process.  They maintained that the person operating such a machine did not influence the quality of the end product.

Assessment

Not upheld

The ASA understood that, although a button was pressed in order to heat the water, Costa baristas were involved manually throughout the coffee-making process and were therefore able to adjust the quality of the coffee to suit a customers preference.  We considered that consumers were likely to understand the claim "Some places make coffee by pressing a button.  At Costa, our Baristas make every cup by hand" to mean that Costa's coffee making process was not fully automated, but relied on the barista's 'hands' or skills.  We also considered that, in that context, consumers would understand the ad to be making a comparison between those coffee outlets that used espresso machines, which controlled the whole coffee-making process at the touch of a button, and the manually-controlled process used by Costa, rather than a claim that Costa did not use buttons at all.  Because we understood that Costa's baristas controlled the coffee-making process from start to finish, and could therefore influence the quality of the coffee they made, we concluded that the ad was unlikely to mislead consumers about the process by which Costa made their coffee.

We investigated the ad under CAP Code clauses 3.1(Substantiation) and 7.1 (Truthfulness), but did not find it in breach.

Action

No further action necessary.

Adjudication of the ASA Council (Non-broadcast)