sell hot and cold drinks, sandwiches, cakes and pastries, and snacks. In 2020, the brand collaborated with three chocolate brands (Quality Street, After Eight and Terry's) for some of their limited-edition Christmas drinks. Costa moved its roastery from Lambeth to Basildon, Essex, in May 2017 with an investment of £38million, increasing their annual coffee-roasting capacity from 11,000 to 45,000 tonnes. In 2020, Costa Coffee introduced canned coffee and iced coffee. Costa Coffee employs Gennaro Pelliccia as a coffee taster, who had his tongue insured for £10m with Lloyd's of London in 2009. Operations Locations Costa Coffee operates 2,467 outlets in the United Kingdom . Overseas, it operates 1,413 stores in 32 countries. The first Costa store outside the UK opened in the United Arab Emirates in 1999, and, in September 2017, was the first coffee shop worldwide to start delivering coffee via drones. Costa Coffee's Bedfordshire headquarters are next to those of Whitbread. Costa Express Following Whitbread's £59.5m acquisition of Coffee Nation, a chain of coffee machines, the machines were re-branded as Costa Express. The company planned to expand to hospitals, universities and transport interchanges. In Denmark, Costa Express machines are located in Shell stations; they had previously also been in Shell Canada. In the UK, many grocery store chain SPAR petrol station stores have Costa Express machines. World distribution , Costa Coffee was available on 4 continents in 38 countries, with 3,884 total locations. Controversies On 19 August 2019, Costa Coffee attracted media attention due to claims of unfair deductions from the pay of its employees. Reports stated that current and former employees had £200 deducted from their pay for training, as well as additional deductions being levied for till discrepancies and running costs. Claims of unfair deductions were triggered by a Twitter post suggesting that staff at a Costa store were forced to reimburse money lost to scammers who came into the store. Trying to distance themselves from the controversy, Costa said contracts for franchise stores were managed by franchisees, and that some staff contracts did have "clauses relating to deductions". Only four days later, additional claims appeared in the media that Costa Coffee franchise workers were "not treated like humans". The report included managers' alleged refusal to pay for sickness, annual leave, or working outside contracted hours, and retaining tips. It cited an anonymous former employee at a store under Goldex Essex Investments Ltd who claimed that