Whitbread, owners of the Premier Inn hotel chain and Beefeater Gril restaurants, have bought the self-service Coffee Nation chain for £59.5m.

Whitbread already own Costa Coffee, and with the acquisition of Coffee Nation, plan to create a new self-service Costa brand, named Costa Express. They hope to open 3000 Costa Express vending machines in the UK over the next five years.

The company also reported a 3.9% growth in like-for-like group sales for January till the 17th February this year, compared against last year. Its total sales have grown 12.4%.