Costa lounge at Winchester South, located immediately right of the main entrance, opposite the customer seating area. Costa has traded at Winchester since the site opened in 2001 and is the only brand that has existed the entire time Winchester has been open. The year Moto began introducing Costa to their sites was 2008, when they bought Winchester from Roadchef. Had this been done one year earlier, Moto would’ve replaced Costa with Cafe Ritazza, a former coffee partner of theirs. When the site first opened, Costa had a main 36-seat store next to WHSmith and a kiosk opposite seating. In 2020, the main Costa store closed down and the kiosk was refurbished and made larger to become the main, and only, Costa at Winchester Southbound. The previous Costa lounge was then boarded up & forgotten for 4 years, now Moto are adding Greggs to Southbound. Costa is a well-known coffee partner of Moto’s and are widespread across the motorway network. They are easier find than competitors Starbucks. Costa remains open 24 hours a day, doing vital trade of providing coffee to tired motorists. Costa Express operates from WHSmith, but there’s no Costa Drive Thru at Winchester. Costa, recently, have rapidly inflated their pricing across all their outlets in the UK. On top of motorway services inflation, Costa is extremely expensive and off putting for customers. Currently, there’s no direct alternative to Costa at Winchester South so customers are obliged to use it, but when Greggs opens, I would assume a proportion of Costa customers would use Greggs instead as they don’t inflate their prices in the same way and Greggs has grown in popularity significantly in the 2010s/2020s. This Costa isn’t advertised from outside the amenity building at all, however, it’s very obvious from the exterior due to the large glass frontages at Winchester and it’s obvious location in the amenity building. Funnily enough, the Starbucks at Fleet Southbound is laid out almost identically to this, in a kiosk with customer seating surrounding it. Costa was surprisingly quiet during my visit despite being midday, but Winchester South was empty. Costa is signposted from the M3 South, and is advertised at points around the site, but isn’t advertised on the exterior of the amenity building, unlike most other Moto’s.

Photo taken on 03/04/2024 by Tom Moon.

Assigned to galleries: Winchester, Costa, M3, Moto