Case study: Rafferty's Coffee is an independent artisan coffee chain that roasts fresh coffee beans in store each day. Rafferty's Coffee was founded by coffee loving brothers Michael and Liam Rafferty. They founded the company in spring 2012 having just returned from a motorcycling tour of Central and South America, in search of the best locally sourced beans. Shortly afterwards, they opened their first store in a small seaside town in Northern Ireland, and within 12 months were able to move to a larger premises with a sea view. A year later they opened their second store in Belfast.

Last year the company turnover was £5.4 million, generating a profit of £812,000. The company operates 10 stores, 6 of which are in Northern Ireland (UK), with 4 in the Republic of Ireland. They currently employ 45 full-time staff, plus additional part-time staff.

Rafferty Coffee is characterised by a strong emphasis on quality and ethics. Each store roasts their own coffee each morning, creating a warm, rich aroma. Stores have an industrial design, with polished concrete counters, steel and copper fixtures, and leather seating. Free WiFi is provided, and music is mellow (often jazz) for the benefit of those who wish to work.

The company has a strong and loyal following on social media, and they have used this in their promotion of fair trade and rights for farmers in Columbia. In response to customer engagement, all take away cups will be compostable within the next year.

The Rafferty brothers have always believed in sustainability in everything they do, and have thus far resisted rapid expansion in favour of a more gradual model, with each brother taking responsibility for one new store in order to ensure that consistency and quality are maintained.

Company review

Last year an opportunity presented to work with a major clothing retailer who would like to incorporate Rafferty Coffee shops within 30 of their high-street retail stores across the UK and Ireland. Talks are now in an advanced stage with the first in-store coffee shop due to open in Belfast in 12 months time.

To facilitate this rapid expansion, Rafferty Coffee engaged Maxdon Consulting to determine the key issues that need addressed in order to switch to a more rapid-growing business model. The report identified the following issues:

• The Rafferty brothers are extremely hands-on in the business, working long hours. They need to divest more responsibility for the day to day running of the company in order to concentrate on overall business strategy and operations at a higher level.
• The company uses an HR consultant on retainer for 20 hours a week. This only provides for specialist HR activities. A dedicated HR department will be required that can also take on roles including duty rotas, booking part-time staff, and dealing with sick leave and cover.
• A large amount of time is spent by the directors on maintaining quality, addressing inconsistencies between stores, and explaining to staff why details matter.
• Staff don't have a clear understanding of the main unique selling point (USP) of the chain; left to their own devices, store managers will revert to roasting large quantities of beans on a weekly basis rather than a daily basis. Furthermore, staff find it difficult to anticipate how much coffee to roast in order to meet demand, but not exceed it.
• Record keeping by staff is not consistent. There are continual battles with staff to ensure that records are kept. For example, while food hygiene practices were being carried out to a high standard, record keeping wasn't always being completed properly, leading to a lower than expected Food Hygiene Rating from the government in one store.
• In some cases, staff are justified in saying that they were too busy serving a high volume of customers and that administrative tasks such as paperwork were a secondary concern. Management needs to collect better metrics on daily footfall in order to resource stores more adequately for peak times.
• Management doesn't have a good understanding of how well individual stores are running, while not on site. This results in management continually shifting in focus from store to store rather than being able to take a more holistic view of the entire business.
• Individual stores report that there are frequent occasions where little food is available for customers to choose from late in the day, or an excess of food left over. 

Question: you are required to prepare a stakeholder register and stakeholder engagement plan. 

 

Your stakeholder register should cover the first two stages of the stakeholder management process - identifying stakeholders and analysing stakeholders. Typically, a stakeholder register may include some or all the following headings: 

• ID/Name
• Type/category
• Power/interest
• Attitude
• Concerns/issues

Your stakeholder engagement plan will consider how best to engage with the stakeholders identified in the stakeholder register, taking into account the findings from your stakeholder analysis. A typical stakeholder engagement plan covers the following:

• Who the stakeholder is
• Appropriate stakeholder engagement methods (what, how, when, responsibility, costs)
• Expected outcome
• Monitoring and evaluation methods