This time, it has chosen the busy Paulista Avenue to serve as a showcase for its growth megaplane in the southeast region
After recently inaugurating its flagship, the Deltaexpresso Coffee Convenience Store, in the Patriarch Square in downtown São Paulo, the company has just opened the doors of its second coffee shop in the city. The point was handpicked by the CEO of the brand, the Portuguese by birth, João José Barbosa, who has as a great challenge for the next few years, to conquer the market in southeastern Brazil. “By the end of the year, 20 new stores are planned, making a total of 100 coffee shops and a 30% increase in sales”, totally against the tide of the economic crisis in Brazil,” Barbosa emphasized. The brand markets blends from more than 60 origins of specialty incoming coffees, imported by Delta Cafés, Deltaexpresso’s exclusive partner and supplier.
CEO – João José Barbosa
Deltaexpresso is the only franchise with more than 50 stores, which had not yet operated on the Rio-São Paulo axis. That is because it was founded in Recife by the Portuguese businessman, when he was 29 years old. “We have created a company in Brazil to represent Delta’s coffees, EuroBrasil”, he says. “We have gained expertise in handling a very large degree of complexity of operations and are ready to grow in the southeast,” he says. At present, there are 80 units in operation in 14 states of the country and a turnover amounting to R$ 57 million, 90% growth over the previous year.
Delta Cafés dominates the coffee scene in Portugal
Delta Cafés is one of the largest roasters in Europe, headquartered in Campo Maior, Portugal. It buy coffees from all over the world and roasts them. Even the Brazilian coffees go to Portugal to be roasted, then return and supply the Deltaexpresso stores. This is because, in Brazil, the importation of green coffee is prohibited. “Which is a tremendous absurdity, in my opinion, because once again the country is exporting commodity and importing added value, and that is bad for Brazil,” he says.
At the beginning, Deltaexpresso had four partners, two Brazilian and two Portuguese. Today, it has six, namely four Brazilian and two Portuguese. The first two stores of the network were opened at the Recife Mall. They were able to test four models of stores: store in store, store, kiosk and street store. They opened the first franchises at the Plaza Mall, from Recife, and two in Caruaru (PE). They opened a few more stores and then decided to create a new company, Café Franchising. Currently, the company is one of the partners’, Eduardo Gusmão, who takes care of all the operation of the franchise, until Deltaexpresso decided to sell the own stores, given that the partners realized that it contaminates the day-to-day and growth strategy as a franchise.
They had already opened a store at the Fortaleza airport when a potential franchisee appeared. “On the first day, we fell in love with the business and proposed to be members of the franchisor, since it owned about 50 other brand stores (Casa do Pão de Queijo), mostly in airports around Brazil. It was one of those good marriages all over the world and we acquired 26 airport shops,” he says.
CEO – João José Barbosa
This partnership resulted in a very large growth, both in number of stores and in sales. To produce food in large quantities, they invested in a factory, which produces exclusively for the network, under the coordination of a chef. The factory is located in the city of Sirinhaém, south coast of Pernambuco.
However, growth is always accompanied by major challenges, and their biggest one was logistics. “As all our products are frozen, and shipping is always expensive and complex. So, we decided to invest in a logistics company of our own,” he explains. Currently they own three trucks and are acquiring the fourth one.
With the growth of the network in the southeast region, possibly, they will have to open a new distribution center soon.
Taking the Wonderful City by storm
By October, the company will open three new stores in Rio de Janeiro: Rio Sul, Bossa Nova Santos Dumont (next to the Uber waiting area) and in the Pão de Açúcar cable car. They already have four operations at Galeão International Airport, one in the Carioca subway, and a few other points still being negotiated.
