Is there anything better than a delicious and thoughtfully crafted cup of joe? Scooter's Coffee, founded in 1998 by Don and Linda Eckles, is more than just a coffee kiosk; it's a brand built on strong emotional connections with farmers, employees, franchisees, baristas, customers, and suppliers.
From its humble beginnings with a drive-thru coffeehouse in Bellevue, Nebraska, Scooter's Coffee has grown into a thriving business, fueled by a commitment to serving high-quality drinks, through a drive-thru lane, fast and friendly. Now, Scooter’s Coffee has more than 700 employees across their corporate headquarters and corporate-owned store locations.
Roasting only from the top 10% of specialty coffee beans in the world, Scooter's Coffee embodies its core values, emphasizing relationships as the foundation of its success. With an unwavering dedication to delivering amazing drinks, incredible service, and fostering meaningful connections, Scooter’s Coffee creates an atmosphere that both customers and employees love.
Is it possible to open 1,000 new store locations while maintaining trust, communication, and growth potential for existing employees? This was the core challenge for Scooter’s Coffee.
And after analyzing the results of their annual employee engagement survey, they knew that Career Growth and Development was one of those key opportunities for their organization to focus on. The survey indicated that Scooter’s Coffee employees wanted to advance their careers within the organization, but didn’t necessarily have the tools, insight, and opportunity to do so.
With their engagement scores in hand, Scooter’s Coffee knew they needed to provide their employees with clear pathways to success within the organization. Not only did they need to design and scale those career pathways - but they needed to work one-on-one with their employees to ensure they knew about long-term growth opportunities within the company. It wasn’t enough to post a job opening. Instead, Scooter’s Coffee knew their strategy needed to re-center each employee’s development plan with regular conversations and goal-setting meetings.
Another opportunity was the need for scaling the approach to communication and greater awareness surrounding the company’s larger goals. With substantial growth on the horizon, increasing communication and visibility into company objectives became critical to foster employee buy-in and ensure consistency in approach. Employees needed to know that Scooter’s Coffee wasn’t just growing just to grow - and that each employee had an opportunity to contribute to the organization’s future success.
Scooter's Coffee implemented a comprehensive employee success strategy with Quantum Workplace's employee success software as its foundation.
The Executive Leadership team recognized the need to support employees in building long-term careers. For that reason, ample resources were allocated for identifying a multifaceted and intuitive technology in order to scale their initiative. Quantum Workplace provided the ideal platform for them to achieve this.
“Quantum Workplace has brought teams closer together and aligned groups across common goals and objectives to share partnership and accountability. As a leader of multiple teams, across a broad array of functions, roles and responsibilities, the tool has allowed me to not only be more organized in communicating with and aligning my direct reports, but also to have clear visibility to the communication, development, engagement, and recognition of all levels within my organization.”
-Missy McKinley, Senior Vice President of Operations
Leveraging Quantum Workplace's employee success tools, Scooter's Coffee fostered regular connections between employees and leaders through the 1-on-1 platform, conducted bi-annual talent reviews, and utilized development check-ins with custom templates developed from leaders and HR team feedback.
This regular, trackable, and enhanced communication helped employees gain a better understanding of the organization's strategy and approach to achieving goals.
Quantum Workplace’s Goals platform facilitated increased awareness and communication around company and employee development goals, leading to an impressive 81% adoption rate of employee goals.
Scooter's Coffee utilized the Talent Review and custom 1-on-1 templates to drive meaningful conversations on career growth and development, while the Recognition feature enhanced their positive company culture through peer feedback and tenure recognition.
The impact of these strategies was evident, with notable increases in the survey categories of Career Growth and Development, and Communication and Resources.
“Quantum Workplace has been an outstanding tool for our team. We use it for 1-on-1s, quarterly reviews, talent reviews, quarterly performance check-ins, and goals. It’s great to have all the information in a single platform allowing both employees and managers to easily look back at goals and key accomplishments. We are just beginning to work on the succession planning within Quantum Workplace and I look forward to capturing that data as well. Overall, Quantum has been an ideal solution for our team and our company.”
-Greg Hand, Chief Financial Officer
Notably, employee turnover decreased by nearly 5% from 2021 to 2022, with corporate stores experiencing an impressive double-digit decrease. With a focus on internal promotions, Scooter's Coffee saw 29 internal promotions year-to-date (January-May), compared to 51 in the entire year of 2022. The positive ROI of these strategies was evident in improved employee engagement, reduced turnover, and increased internal promotions.
Scooter's Coffee created a scalable solution supported by Quantum Workplace's impactful and multi-faceted solution for employee development and engagement.
The partnership with Quantum Workplace has been instrumental in Scooter's Coffee's journey over the past two years, providing unmatched support and valuable insights. With an unwavering commitment to customer needs, Quantum Workplace’s responsive approach has made the collaboration truly exceptional.
Looking ahead, Scooter's Coffee is poised for continued growth, with a goal of opening its first 1,000 stores in 2024. To support this expansion, succession planning will be a key objective, ensuring comprehensive training and development for future leaders to facilitate seamless organizational growth.
Furthermore, Scooter's Coffee will continue to evaluate technology and systems to maintain simplicity, ensuring scalability and sustainability in the face of growth.
Quantum Workplace will play a critical role in supporting streamlined people processes. Beyond business objectives, the company's top priority remains listening and responding to employee needs.
By embracing employee feedback while staying true to the company's mission, Scooter's Coffee is committed to nurturing a positive and employee-centric culture that propels its success in the years to come.
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