A Nespresso boutique store in Miami, USA | Photo credit: Nespresso 

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Nespresso’s North American CEO Alfonso Gonzales Loeschen has outlined the effects of the pandemic on the Swiss firm’s US business. In an interview with Reuters, Loeschen said that while consumer sales had risen 20% during 2020, including a marked rise in online sales, the premium coffee pod company did not anticipate a recovery of office volumes to pre-pandemic levels until 2022.
 
“It seems that only around 20% of workers are back to offices, and many people will keep working in a hybrid system,” he said.
 
Loeschen also said Nespresso would not yet raise the cost of capsules despite higher global coffee prices caused by smaller harvests and Covid-19-related supply disruption among the world’s top producers.
 
Instead, Nespresso would absorb higher prices until there could be more clarity on market conditions, Loeschen said.
 
In June 2021, the International Coffee Organization (ICO) identified a ‘firm upward trend’ for coffee prices over the first eight months of coffee year 2020/21, indicating a recovery from historically low prices that began in 2016.
 
Like many at-home coffee companies, the pandemic has proved fruitful for Nespresso as consumers worldwide increased retail coffee consumption amid ongoing out-of-home trading restrictions. In April 2021 Nespresso reported robust global sales growth of 15.6% to CHF 1.6bn ($1.8bn).

In March 2021, Nespresso also signalled confidence in its global boutique store business, unveiling a new flagship store concept in Vienna, Austria.