BDS-1000 Dossier: Costa Coffee

Key Findings

• Economic: The Coca-Cola Company’s independent Israeli licensee, the Central Bottling Company (CBC, Wertheim family), operates a distribution centre and cooling houses in the Atarot settlement industrial zone in occupied East Jerusalem and sources wine grapes for its Tabor Winery subsidiary from West Bank and occupied Golan Heights settlements, with this activity documented as ongoing as of a February 2025 update, after both the ICJ’s July 2024 advisory opinion and the ICC’s November 2024 arrest warrants.¹²
• Ownership nexus: CBC’s controlling shareholder, David Wertheim, is also a joint-controlling shareholder of Bank Mizrahi-Tefahot, which is separately documented as financing settlement construction and was divested by Norway’s KLP pension fund in 2021.³⁴⁵
• Political: Costa Coffee itself has issued no statement on the Israel-Palestine conflict, but the brand has been explicitly named since April 2025 by the UK Palestine Solidarity Campaign’s “Don’t Buy Apartheid” boycott campaign, alongside other Coca-Cola brands.⁶
• Not found: No evidence was identified of any Costa Coffee defence contract, dual-use product, military-linked digital/surveillance technology, or direct Costa retail presence in Israel; a claimed “partnership” with Strauss Group (an IDF Golani Brigade supporter) was reviewed and found unsubstantiated.

Target Profile

Key Facts:

• CBC (Coca-Cola Israel) is privately held by the Wertheim family: David Wertheim (62.99%), with Reuven Becher, Gil Orion, and Chen Amir each holding 12.33%.¹
• CBC’s subsidiary Central Beverage Distribution Company operates a regional distribution centre and cooling houses in the Atarot Industrial Zone, occupied East Jerusalem, documented as current by Who Profits as of 10 February 2025.¹
• CBC’s 92.5%-owned Tabor Winery sources grapes from the Gush Etzion settlement bloc (Alon Shvut, West Bank) and the Ortal and Keshet settlements in the occupied Golan Heights.²
• CBC donated 50,000 shekels (~$13,850) to the right-wing group Im Tirtzu in 2015, four years before Coca-Cola acquired Costa Coffee.¹²¹³
• No public evidence identified of Costa Coffee-branded retail operations in Israel; Costa’s own published 38-country operating footprint does not include Israel.

Executive Summary

Costa Coffee is a UK-founded coffee-retail chain that has operated as a wholly owned subsidiary of The Coca-Cola Company since the completion of a $4.9 billion acquisition from Whitbread PLC on 3 January 2019.⁹¹⁰ Across all four domain audits underlying this dossier - military, digital, economic, and political - no evidence was identified of Costa Coffee itself maintaining stores, franchise agreements, offices, or any other direct corporate presence in Israel or the Occupied Palestinian Territories. The company’s documented Israel/Palestine nexus is therefore not a direct one; it is inherited, at one remove, through its parent Coca-Cola Company’s relationship with the Central Bottling Company (CBC), the independent, privately held Wertheim-family-owned licensee that bottles and distributes Coca-Cola-trademarked beverages inside Israel.¹

The strongest documented vectors sit in the economic domain. CBC’s subsidiary, Central Beverage Distribution Company, operates a regional distribution centre and cooling houses in the Atarot Industrial Zone, an Israeli settlement industrial zone in occupied East Jerusalem built on land expropriated from the Palestinian village of Beit Hanina in 1970.¹⁴ CBC’s 92.5%-owned Tabor Winery sources grapes from vineyards in the Gush Etzion settlement bloc and the occupied Golan Heights.² Both operations are documented as current as of a February 2025 Who Profits update - meaning they postdate the ICJ’s 19 July 2024 advisory opinion on the occupation and the ICC’s November 2024 arrest warrants, with no evidence identified of any change in status.¹ The ownership chain compounds this exposure: CBC’s controlling shareholder, David Wertheim, is also a joint-controlling shareholder (with the Ofer family, ~41.32% combined) of Bank Mizrahi-Tefahot, a bank independently named on the UN OHCHR’s settlement-business database for financing settlement construction and providing settlement banking services, and from which Norway’s KLP pension fund divested in July 2021.³⁴⁵

The political domain adds reputational and campaign exposure without direct corporate action by Costa itself. No standalone statement by Costa Coffee on the Israel-Palestine conflict was identified; all corporate-level commentary traces to parent Coca-Cola, whose public FAQ asserts neutrality and denies funding military operations.¹⁵ Coca-Cola CEO James Quincey’s only identified conflict-specific remark, at Davos in January 2024, cited the company’s operational symmetry (“an Israeli bottler and a bottler in Gaza”) rather than a substantive human-rights position.¹⁵ Despite this corporate silence, the UK Palestine Solidarity Campaign’s “Don’t Buy Apartheid” campaign, launched in March–April 2025, explicitly names Costa Coffee among the targeted Coca-Cola brand portfolio, and the BDS National Committee added Coca-Cola to its priority boycott list in December 2024 citing the Atarot facility.¹⁶⁶

Substantial parts of the allegation record circulating around Costa Coffee did not withstand verification and are excluded or flagged as unresolved in this dossier. A claimed Costa Coffee–Strauss Group “partnership” - Strauss being a documented IDF Golani Brigade supporter - is unsubstantiated by any primary source and is contradicted by Strauss’s own documented partnerships with PepsiCo and Unilever. A widely circulated claim that CBC’s Tara Dairy supplies IDF bases through the Shekem canteen system could not be verified against any primary source, including Who Profits’ own CBC profile, and is treated as unresolved. A claim that Costa Coffee has operated roughly 130 cafés in Israel since 1999 rests on a single uncorroborated, low-reliability source and is contradicted by Costa’s own published country list. Neither Coca-Cola, CBC, nor Costa Coffee could be confirmed by name in the OHCHR settlement-business database from primary document text, notwithstanding advocacy claims of inclusion. No military contracts, dual-use products, or defence-sector supply relationships were identified for Costa Coffee in any jurisdiction.

The resulting composite score is BRS 365, Tier D (Moderate). This outcome is driven overwhelmingly by the Economic score (5.11), reflecting the CBC/Wertheim ownership chain into Atarot, Tabor Winery, and Bank Mizrahi-Tefahot, with a secondary contribution from Political (3.58) reflecting boycott-campaign targeting and the absence of any corrective corporate statement. Military (0.01) and Digital (0.05) are effectively null, reflecting a documented absence of military contracting, dual-use products, or Israeli-linked surveillance/security technology in Costa Coffee’s own operations.

Timeline of Relevant Events

Corporate Overview

The relevant corporate chain has two structurally separate branches. First: The Coca-Cola Company (Atlanta, Georgia; NYSE: KO) wholly owns Costa Coffee (Costa Limited, UK-registered), acquired from Whitbread PLC in January 2019.⁹¹⁰ Costa Coffee has no subsidiaries, franchise arrangements, or retail presence identified in Israel or the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

Second, and structurally independent: The Coca-Cola Company licenses its trademarks in Israel to CBC (Central Bottling Company), a privately held company controlled by the Wertheim family and unconnected to Costa Coffee’s own corporate governance.¹ CBC’s subsidiary Central Beverage Distribution Company operates the Atarot distribution centre and cooling houses.¹¹⁴ CBC’s 92.5%-owned Tabor Winery sources settlement-grown grapes.² CBC also owns Tara Dairy, which operates a farm in Shadmot Mehola, a settlement in the occupied Jordan Valley (acquired by CBC in 2004); a widely circulated claim that Tara Dairy supplies IDF bases via the Shekem canteen system could not be verified from any primary source and is treated as unresolved.¹ CBC reports Israeli soft-drink market share variously described as roughly two-thirds to 40%, with annual revenues around NIS 6 billion - figures pertaining to CBC’s business, not Costa Coffee’s or Coca-Cola Company’s consolidated financials.¹

A third, distinct entity worth noting for context is the Palestinian National Beverage Company, a separate Coca-Cola franchisee founded by Zahi Khouri, which has bottled Coca-Cola products in the West Bank since the late 1990s and opened a $20 million bottling plant in Gaza in December 2016, directly employing approximately 120 people. This entity is unconnected to CBC or Costa Coffee and demonstrates that Coca-Cola’s franchise structure spans both Israeli and Palestinian markets.

No public evidence identified of Costa Coffee-branded products being distributed through CBC’s Atarot facility or any other Israeli channel; indeed, no evidence was identified of Costa Coffee brand products being sold in Israel at all. Costa’s Who Profits-documented brand portfolio via CBC - Coca-Cola, Sprite, Fanta, FUZE, Kinley, Carlsberg, Tuborg, Müller, Prigat, and Neviot - does not include Costa Coffee.¹

Domain Summaries

Military: Military

Mechanism of Involvement

No public evidence identified of any contract, tender, framework agreement, or memorandum of understanding between Costa Coffee (or The Coca-Cola Company) and the Israeli Ministry of Defence, IDF, Israel Prison Service, Israel Border Police, or any Israeli state security body. Costa Coffee is a retail coffee brand with no documented dual-use, mil-spec, or tactical product lines, and no appearance in SIBAT catalogues, defence exhibition directories, or Israeli procurement registries. The only documented linkage of any kind runs through CBC’s settlement infrastructure - the Atarot distribution centre and Tara Dairy’s Shadmot Mehola farm - which sits within the Economic/Political domains rather than constituting military supply, and a claimed IDF Shekem canteen supply relationship for Tara Dairy remains unverified against any primary source.¹ Costa Coffee’s UK contact centre uses NICE (NiCE) Ltd, a company founded in 1986 by engineers from IDF Unit 8200 that has since pivoted entirely to civilian enterprise customer-experience software; this relationship falls outside the Military boundary since the product produces no targeting decision or weapons effect.⁸²⁵

Counter-Arguments and Evidence Limits

No Costa Coffee or CBC involvement was identified in the PAX for Peace report on companies arming Israel and their financiers. A claimed “partnership” between Costa Coffee and Strauss Group - a documented supporter of the IDF Golani Brigade - circulates in advocacy sources but is unsubstantiated by any primary source; Strauss Group’s own documented corporate partnerships are with PepsiCo and Unilever, not Coca-Cola. This claim is treated as rejected for want of evidence, consistent with this dossier’s evidentiary standard. The Tara Dairy IDF Shekem supply claim is likewise unverified and not corroborated by Who Profits’ own CBC profile.¹

Named Entities and Evidence Map

• Costa Coffee / Costa Limited - no military nexus identified.
• CBC (Wertheim family) - Israeli licensee; settlement infrastructure, not military contracting.¹
• Tara Dairy (Shadmot Mehola) - settlement-located; claimed IDF canteen link unverified.¹
• NICE (NiCE) Ltd - Unit 8200 origin, now civilian CX vendor; outside Military boundary.⁸²⁵
• Strauss Group - claimed partnership unsubstantiated and excluded from the record.

Digital: Digital

Mechanism of Involvement

Costa Coffee is a technology consumer, not a technology or infrastructure vendor. Its UK contact centre uses NiCE (Israeli-founded, 1986, dual-listed NASDAQ/TASE) and RingCentral for call distribution, and TechSee (Israeli, Tel Aviv, founded 2015) for AR-based remote troubleshooting of Costa Express machines - both peripheral, customer-facing support functions.⁸ Costa’s UK store connectivity runs on Cisco Meraki SD-WAN delivered via Exponential-e; Cisco separately holds extensive, independently documented contracts with the Israeli Ministry of Defense and Israel Police, but no evidence connects Costa’s specific Meraki deployment to those contracts - these are separate deployments of the same multinational vendor’s general product line.^2627282930 Costa migrated core systems to AWS via ANS Group in December 2019; AWS is separately a co-contractor on the Israeli government’s Project Nimbus cloud programme, but no evidence identified that Costa’s tenancy uses Nimbus infrastructure or Israeli AWS regions.^1819313233

Counter-Arguments and Evidence Limits

No evidence was identified of Costa Coffee deploying facial-recognition, biometric, predictive-policing, or workforce-surveillance tools of Israeli origin. No R&D facilities, engineering offices, patent arrangements, or startup investments connecting Costa Coffee to Israeli institutions were identified (Coca-Cola Company’s Tel Aviv-based “The Bridge” accelerator is a parent-level, non-equity programme with no source naming Costa as a participant). Costa Coffee does not appear in the “Don’t Buy Into Occupation” 2025 dataset or the OHCHR settlement-business database. Costa’s Modern Slavery Statement summary does not name Israel or Palestine as a high-risk jurisdiction.³⁴²¹³⁵

Named Entities and Evidence Map

• NiCE Ltd, TechSee - Israeli-founded vendors; civilian customer-service functions only.⁸
• Cisco Systems / Meraki (via Exponential-e) - general enterprise networking; Cisco’s separate IDF/police contracts not shown to touch Costa’s deployment.^2627282930
• AWS (via ANS Group) - general cloud hosting; separate Project Nimbus co-contractor status not shown to extend to Costa’s tenancy.^1819313233
• GEP Software, Computacenter - US/UK vendors, no Israeli-origin technology identified.³⁶²⁰

Economic: Economic

Mechanism of Involvement

The Coca-Cola Company’s Israeli market is served exclusively by CBC, an independent, privately held licensee (David Wertheim 62.99%; Becher, Orion, Amir 12.33% each).¹ CBC’s subsidiary Central Beverage Distribution Company operates the Atarot distribution centre and cooling houses in occupied East Jerusalem, and CBC’s 92.5%-owned Tabor Winery sources grapes from West Bank (Gush Etzion) and occupied Golan Heights settlements - both documented as current as of February 2025, with no indication of discontinuation post-ICJ opinion or post-ICC warrants.¹² David Wertheim additionally jointly controls (with the Ofer family, ~41.32% combined) Bank Mizrahi-Tefahot, which is independently documented as financing settlement construction in Ariel, Beitar Illit, Ma’ale Adumim, Modi’in Illit, Har Homa, Pisgat Ze’ev, Ramat Shlomo, and Neve Ya’akov, and operating settlement and East Jerusalem branches; Norway’s KLP divested from the bank in July 2021 citing its OHCHR listing.^3453738 CBC donated 50,000 shekels to Im Tirtzu in 2015.¹²¹³ Israeli media reported that over 100,000 soldiers received Bamba and Coca-Cola-branded products in a single distribution event; this is documented in Political as a volunteer/civilian-organized initiative rather than an official corporate Coca-Cola contribution.

Counter-Arguments and Evidence Limits

No public evidence identified of Costa Coffee or The Coca-Cola Company directly owning the Atarot facility or Tabor Winery vineyards - both are CBC assets, held at arm’s length from Costa/Coca-Cola’s own governance.¹² No public evidence identified of Costa Coffee-branded retail operations in Israel; a claim of ~130 Costa cafés operating in Israel since 1999 rests on a single uncorroborated source and is contradicted by Costa’s own published 38-country operating list. No public evidence identified of Costa Coffee or Coca-Cola Company holding disclosed portfolio positions in Israeli companies, sovereign bonds, or investment funds, or underwriting Israeli sovereign debt. Coca-Cola’s standing FAQ states the company “does not fund military operations in any country” and that claims of income transfer to Israel are “completely untrue,” though this statement is generic and undated rather than specific to post-2024 developments.¹⁵ Neither Coca-Cola Company nor CBC could be confirmed as listed in the OHCHR settlement-business database from primary document text, despite advocacy claims of inclusion - an acknowledged evidence gap rather than a confirmed finding.²¹²²²⁴

Named Entities and Evidence Map

• CBC / David Wertheim (62.99%) - controlling entity for settlement-linked infrastructure.¹
• Central Beverage Distribution Company (Atarot) - distribution/cooling facility, occupied East Jerusalem.¹¹⁴
• Tabor Winery (92.5% CBC-owned) - settlement-grape sourcing.²
• Bank Mizrahi-Tefahot - Wertheim/Ofer joint control; OHCHR-listed; KLP-divested.³⁴⁵
• Im Tirtzu - recipient of 2015 CBC donation.¹²¹³

Political: Political

Mechanism of Involvement

No standalone Costa Coffee statement on the Israel-Palestine conflict was identified; all corporate commentary traces to parent Coca-Cola.¹⁵ Coca-Cola’s FAQ frames the company as neutral, while CEO James Quincey’s January 2024 Davos remark described the company as having “an Israeli bottler and a bottler in Gaza” - an operational-symmetry framing rather than a substantive position.¹⁵ A comparative asymmetry has been documented: Coca-Cola suspended Russia operations rapidly in March 2022 following the Ukraine invasion, with no equivalent operational response or solidarity statement identified following the October 2023 Gaza war. CBC founder Muzi Wertheim was a former Mossad intelligence officer and Palmach veteran who also supported the Jabotinsky Institute.¹⁷ In 2015, Coca-Cola wrote to the Anti-Defamation League disavowing support for the BDS movement, amid simultaneous pressure from pro-Israel advocacy groups over its separate Palestinian franchisee’s BDS-supportive statements. Civil society attention is extensive: the BDS National Committee added Coca-Cola to its priority boycott list in December 2024 citing Atarot, and the UK Palestine Solidarity Campaign’s “Don’t Buy Apartheid” campaign, launched March–April 2025, explicitly names Costa Coffee among targeted brands, with a national day of action on 5 April 2025 and reported local actions targeting specific Costa branches.¹⁶⁶²³

Counter-Arguments and Evidence Limits

Costa Coffee has no independent franchise, ownership structure, or corporate presence in Israel or the Occupied Palestinian Territories; all identified settlement-linked activity runs through the arm’s-length CBC/Wertheim structure, not through Costa Coffee or Coca-Cola Company directly. Coca-Cola’s Palestinian franchisee, the Palestinian National Beverage Company (Zahi Khouri), separately operates a Gaza bottling plant, demonstrating a dual-market presence rather than one-sided alignment. No public evidence identified of Costa Coffee-specific PAC contributions, lobbying spend, or legal/regulatory action tied to occupied-territory operations. No public evidence identified of personal Israel-Palestine statements, donations, or board affiliations by CEO Philippe Schaillee or his predecessors. No public evidence identified of Costa Coffee using military heritage or state-security branding; its founding narrative traces to Italian immigrant brothers Bruno and Sergio Costa’s 1971 London coffee-roasting business.

Named Entities and Evidence Map

• Coca-Cola Company / James Quincey - parent-level public positioning.¹⁵
• Costa Coffee / Philippe Schaillee - no identified statements or ties.
• CBC / Muzi & David Wertheim - Mossad/Palmach founder background; Jabotinsky Institute support.¹⁷
• Palestine Solidarity Campaign, BDS National Committee - campaign actors naming Costa/Coca-Cola.¹⁶⁶²³
• Palestinian National Beverage Company / Zahi Khouri - separate West Bank/Gaza Coca-Cola franchisee.

BDS-1000 Score (V4)

• V_MAX: 5.11 Sum_OTHERS: 3.64
• BRS Score: 365 Tier: D (Moderate)

V_MAX is set by Economic, reflecting the documented CBC/Wertheim ownership chain into Atarot settlement infrastructure, Tabor Winery settlement-vineyard sourcing, and the Wertheim family’s joint control of an OHCHR-listed bank - the most directly evidenced and highest-magnitude vector in the record. Political contributes the bulk of Sum_OTHERS, reflecting sustained boycott-campaign targeting of the Costa brand and the absence of any corrective corporate statement, while Military and Digital remain near zero for want of any documented military contract or Israeli-linked security/surveillance technology. The score is calculated using the fixed, human-vetted BDS-1000 methodology: scale-free Impact (activity type) multiplied by Magnitude (scale) and Proximity (directness), evidence-only and drawn exclusively from the four domain audits underlying this dossier.

Methodology Note

• Every claim in this dossier traces to the Military, Digital, Economic, and Political domain audits; no additional research was conducted for this document.
• Where the underlying audits found nothing, this dossier states “No public evidence identified” rather than inferring involvement.
• Scoring is scale-free: Impact (I) reflects the type of activity documented, Magnitude (M) reflects its scale, and Proximity (P) reflects how directly the entity is implicated - not company size or revenue.
• Temporal rule: divested, exited, or discontinued operations are mitigated in scoring; conversely, CBC’s Atarot and Tabor Winery operations are scored as current because they are documented as ongoing after the ICJ’s July 2024 opinion and the ICC’s November 2024 warrants.
• Entity attribution follows a no-transitive-guilt standard: conduct by CBC, an independent Israeli licensee, is recorded and scored as CBC’s conduct within an ownership/franchise nexus, not conflated with direct conduct by Costa Coffee or The Coca-Cola Company; claims that did not withstand verification (the Strauss Group partnership claim, the IDF Shekem supply claim, the ~130-café claim) are flagged as unsubstantiated or unresolved rather than treated as established.
• Settlement-linked operations (e.g., Atarot, Tabor Winery) are dual-counted across Economic and Political where the audits document both an economic and a political/reputational dimension to the same underlying facts.

End Notes