Café Coffee Day (CCD) is a well-known chain of coffee shops in India, famous for its premium coffee options. The business started in the early 1990s and built a reputation over time for quality food and services. From coffee to food, snacks to soda drinks, CCD has become a top name in the metropolitan cities. CCD also owns plantations, roasts its own beans, and sells packaged coffee.
From serving customers through cafes to kiosks, vending machines, and exports, CCD has become a big name in the country for coffee lovers. However, CCD has multiple financial troubles, which make the brand lose reputation and trust of investors. Flaws in CCD’s balance sheet and debts caused multiple stores to shut down permanently.
Even after all this, Café Coffee Day didn’t opt for bankruptcy. Instead, the board at CCD started investing in the newer generation and captured the market again. Now, CCD is thriving, and its revenues are going up. Here, we will discuss the new Café Coffee Day’s business model and how they make money.
How Is Café Coffee Day Structured?
CCD’s business model is built on multiple formats where they have full-service cafés to allow people to sit, relax, meet, study, or work. These high-cost cafés require extra staff, and CCD invests in everything from ambience to food for a better customer experience for such outlets. On the other hand, CCD also offers smaller format cafés, kiosks, and express outlets that you can find in metro stations, hospitals, malls, airports, and busy public areas.
Besides these stores, CCD also integrates vertically, where CCD grows its coffee in its own estates, processes the coffee, and roasts the beans. These packed beans are sold at stores and exported to different countries. So, CCD has multiple sales points in the business, which help in diversifying and increasing its revenue.
| Company/Brand | Café Coffee Day / Coffee Day Enterprises Ltd. |
| Establishment Year | 1996 |
| Headquarters | Bengaluru, Karnataka, India |
| Founder/Owner | V. G. Siddhartha (founder); current owner is Coffee Day Enterprises Ltd. |
| Industry | Cafés, coffee retail, hospitality, exports, real estate/leasing, investments |
| Net Worth (2025) | Approximately ₹ 936 crore as of Sep 2025 |
| Total Revenue 2025 | ₹ 1,077.86 crore |
How Does CCD Make Money?
Café Coffee Day makes money through several channels that work together to boost sales. Also, there are various products that CCD sells for customers to make their coffee at home. Below are five different revenue sources used by CCD.
1. Revenue from Café Operation
The core is the cafés. CCD runs full cafés where people can sit and buy coffee, snacks, desserts, and food. These cafés also sell beverages other than coffee. These full cafés have higher margins on drinks. But they also have higher costs: rent, staff wages, utility bills, and décor. CCD uses premium cafés (like The Square) in high footfall areas. That lets them charge more.
2. Smaller Formats
CCD uses multiple formats to reduce costs as the brand itself was in loss in Q2, but it is now in profit of 6cr for Q3. CCD uses kiosks and express outlets as these are cheaper to operate, require less staff, and less space. You can spot these small formats like Kiosks, Express outlets, and vending machines in malls, airports, railway stations, hospitals, and in high footfall areas.
3. Packaged Coffee for Retail and Exports
CCD does not limit itself to cafés. It sells packaged coffee beans and powders. People buy these to brew at home. It has outlets like “Fresh & Ground” for this purpose. It also exports coffee beans and products to overseas markets. By owning plantations and roasting facilities, CCD controls quality and cost.
4. Hospitality and Other Businesses
CCD’s parent company, Coffee Day Enterprises Limited (CDEL), has more than cafes, and they run resorts under the name The Serai. These resorts and places lease office space. There are multiple investments and corporate functions, along with real estate assets, to raise funds.
5. Cost Management and Scale Economies
To make more money, CCD is trying to reduce costs, and they have successfully done so in Q3 of 2025. As CCD owns coffee estates, they have complete control over the prices of raw coffee beans. CCD also buys its coffee in bulk and uses centralized roasting to reduce costs. Due to standardized store designs, the maintenance cost also goes down this way.
Financial Performances
For FY25 (ending March 2025), CCD (Coffee Day Enterprises Ltd) reported a total consolidated revenue of ~ ₹ 1,077.86 crore. The net loss narrowed compared to previous years: about ₹ 143.20 crore loss in FY25.
What’s New in 2025
CCD has reduced its store count in Q3 FY25 as there were many underperforming outlets, and it saved extra costs. Revenue is rising and it is currently between 9.14% and 11% in Q3 FY25.
