The franchise agreement will enable the boutique café group to tap into Lagardère Travel Retail's extensive global travel hub retail network
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EL&N highlighted travel locations as a market with the potential to fuel its growth | Photo credit: Lagardère Travel Retail
UK-based boutique café group EL&N has appointed Lagardère Travel Retail as its exclusive franchisee for travel locations.
Founded in London in 2017, EL&N currently operates 25 stores across the UK, France, Italy, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE.
The social media savvy brand highlighted travel locations as a market with the potential to fuel its growth.
EL&N said Lagardère Travel Retail will support its current travel retail outlets at London’s Heathrow Airport and St Pancras Station and help the café group explore opportunities in new markets.
“We are incredibly excited to be embarking on this brand new journey with the team at Lagardère Travel Retail. Over the past five years, we have successfully solidified our position within the F&B landscape as innovative market leaders, but now feels like the perfect timing for us to bring our offering to new territories within the travel retail environment. This is the beginning of a dream partnership with Lagardère and we look forward to working together with the team to tap into a new demographic for EL&N,” said Alexandra Miller, Founder, EL&N.
France-based Lagardère Travel Retail, which generated €5.2bn ($5.5bn) sales in 2022, said travellers are constantly looking for unique concepts and the addition of EL&N to its portfolio will be of ‘great value to the travel retail environment’.
“This opens up a tremendous opportunity to appeal to new profiles of consumers – young, tech savvy, fashionable women,” said Mélanie Guilldou, EVP Foodservice, Lagardère Travel Retail.
Operating more than 5,000 stores across the foodservice, duty free and travel accessory industries, Lagardère Travel Retail has a presence in airports, railway stations and other concessions across 42 countries globally.
The global travel retailer has recently strengthened its presence across Asia Pacific via a joint venture with Australian Travel Retailer AWPL as well as global catering company Marche.
In February 2023 Lagardère Travel Retail announced the acquisition of master franchise rights for UK-based Costa Coffee in Poland and Latvia, where the coffee chain currently has 142 stores.