Barista Coffee Company is now looking at smaller towns after establishing itself as one of the country's leading players in the coffee retail market.
Surjya Meher, head-marketing, said Barista would add between 50 and 60 stores to its 130 standalone stores by the end of this financial year.
"Of this, around 30-35 would be in second-level cities and the focus would be predominantly on southern and western markets," he said.Other initiatives include launching 'Barista on the go', a venture that was announced in 2003 but failed to take off for certain reasons.
The first of these outlets would open on the Delhi-Mathura Road in collaboration with Indian Oil and will be a relatively low cost outlet.
"We are also looking at opening more outlets on routes such as the Mumbai-Pune expressway which see high volumes of short-haul traffic and would be opening five stores by the year end," said Meher.
On the recently opened Barista Creme store in Delhi, Meher said the response to the store had far surpassed expectations and the company was planning six similar stores across Mumbai, Bangalore and Hyderabad.
"The Barista Creme stores offer a different experience as compared to espresso bars - these stores have a wider basket of offerings and are closer to a casual dining experience than our other outlets," explains Meher.
The interiors too are done differently and the average cost of setting up a Creme store at Rs 40-45 lakh (Rs 4-.4.5 million) is much higher than the Rs 20 lakh (Rs 2 million) investment that goes into the espresso bar.
Barista is also exploring the franchisee model in India, something it has successfully done at its branches in Dubai and Sri Lanka.
Internationally, it has identified the Gulf, South East Asian and SAARC countries, as places where it wants to have a presence in out of which the first store would open in Bangladesh.
Also on the radar are Afghanistan and the Euro countries, although that would happen only next year.