It was announced on Monday that the second largest coffee house in the United States, Caribou Coffee, has been acquired by the German holding company Joh. A. Benckiser Group (JAB) for approximately $340 million. JAB has offered a 30% premium over Caribou’s Friday close of $12.32 with a deal paying $16 per share, which the Caribou board unanimously approved.
For those of you that choose Caribou over Starbucks, you probably won’t see too much change. Caribou Coffee will still operate as an independent company with its current branding. The deal also keeps the company’s headquarters in Minneapolis. While it is unclear what is in store for the future of the company, Caribou Coffee currently has 610 locations in 22 states and 10 operating internationally.
Once news broke about the deal, competing coffee brands saw their stock prices climb as the amount of publicly traded premium coffee companies are slowly fading from the market. In fact, earlier this summer, Joh. A. Benckiser Group bought out Peet’s Coffee & Tea for a total of $1 billion.
Source: bizjournals.com
Photo by by scottfeldstein via flickr
