Lolly’s Partnership Provides Scalable Solutions For Costa

Streamlining Operations With Smart, Scalable Technology

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About The Partnership

Sandpiper is a leading franchise partner for Costa Coffee in Gibraltar, operating five high-footfall locations across the region. In a fast-paced food and beverage environment, Sandpiper was looking for an end-to-end digital solution that could streamline operations, enhance customer loyalty, and evolve with its business needs.

That’s where Lolly came in. From day one, the collaboration has been defined by flexibility, speed, and seamless integration — enabling Sandpiper to upgrade its systems with minor disruption. What started as a loyalty app project quickly scaled into a full technology ecosystem, with Lolly supporting everything from kitchen displays to customer-facing screens, kiosks, and integrated payments.

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About Sandpiper

Sandpiper operates a portfolio of retail and hospitality brands in Gibraltar, including five Costa Coffee stores. The Costa sites are known for their high daily volumes and strong customer loyalty. Alongside its cafés, Sandpiper also manages other branded retail outlets, though each operates on its own bespoke system. Costa’s franchise model gives operators autonomy over their POS and loyalty infrastructure, making it essential to find a flexible and scalable tech partner.

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The Challenge

The team had long been searching for a way to digitise their Costa loyalty programme — but found that most providers either focused on EPOS or loyalty, not both. Standalone loyalty apps required third-party integrations, which were both costly and complex to implement.

At the same time, existing Android terminals for Bitcoin payments were failing, and the broader goal of introducing customer-facing screens, kitchen displays and digital menus seemed far off — until Lolly entered the picture.

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The Solution – Powered By Lolly

What began as a simple introduction turned into a comprehensive digital rollout. Working closely with Lolly, Sandpiper retained its existing tills but added an integrated loyalty app (white-labelled as Costa), QR scanning, and pre-order functionality.

Over time, this was expanded to include:

- Customer-facing display screens showing basket contents and promotional content

- Kitchen Display Screens (KDS) to replace paper tickets and streamline barista workflow

- Digital menu boards, updated in-house via a user-friendly portal

- Self-serve kiosks allowing customers to order and pay independently

- Bitcoin integration via CoinCorner and Elevon payment processing

The Lolly system now powers customer interaction from order to fulfilment — all with minimal friction for staff and customers alike.

“We trialled other providers before Lolly — some looked great on paper but didn’t work in practice. Lolly has proven to be flexible, fast and incredibly easy to work with. They get food and beverage. And they’re helping us stay ahead.”

— Sandpiper representative

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The Impact

Feedback from both staff and customers has been overwhelmingly positive. Teams find the system intuitive and fast, with the ability to edit prices, hide out-of-stock items, or make on-the-fly changes — a major step up from their previous provider’s three-week turnaround times.

From a customer perspective, the loyalty app has exceeded all expectations. Within six months, Sandpiper’s Costa app is already one of the top performers in the global Costa franchise network for loyalty penetration. App users are also spending more — with average spend increasing by 18% per transaction at the self-serve kiosk.

Most customers didn’t even notice the change in system — which, for Sandpiper, is a sign of a truly seamless upgrade.

“Our mission is to provide agile, end-to-end solutions that grow with our clients. The Sandpiper partnership is a great example of how our modular platform can scale from a simple app deployment to full-service kiosks and beyond — all while keeping operations intuitive and efficient.”

— Harriet Gribble, Project Manager, Lolly

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The Future

Sandpiper plans to roll out Lolly’s digital menu boards across all Costa sites and expand its kiosk pilot to a second location. The team continues to explore further features on the app, including vouchers and subscriptions.

With Lolly’s UK-based, in-house team providing ongoing support, Sandpiper has the technical confidence and operational freedom to keep innovating at pace.