Inside Gloria Jean's Coffees, Coffee House of the Future - what you need to know

In this interview with Gloria Jean's coffees Gareth Pike, CEO Pacific, we find out how it is revolutionising their business.

QSR Media: What goals does Gloria Jean’s Coffees have for 2012?
Gareth: 2012 for Gloria Jean’s Coffees is set to be one of our most exciting years to come, so we have many goals as you would expect. Our overarching goal for 2012 is the delivery of our Coffee House of the Future project. It is a project that we have been working on for a number of years now which has involved a significant amount of research and understanding of what people want from their coffee experience. So 2012 for us is the culmination of this project, and it’s delivery throughout our Australian business and then across the globe for Gloria Jean’s Coffees. This project ultimately delivers on our vision, to be the most loved and respected coffee company in the world. We know that love and respect are not a given, they have to be earned. So our objective is to ensure that the Coffee House of the Future project goes a long way to delivering on our vision and that love and respect that people have for us.

QSR Media: Gloria Jean’s Coffees has recently unveiled its Coffee House of the Future, what kind of impact is this having on sales?
Gareth: We spent two years in the research phase of this project, evaluating all the elements of our coffee house. This culminated in us delivering a concept coffee house in the middle of last year. This was launched to the public at the Good Food & Wine Show Sydney, which was a very exciting time for us. We had an incredible response and a lot of engagement from the guests at the show. That enabled us then to open our first pilot coffee house towards the end of 2011, in October. This coffee house has met all sales expectations, so we’re very pleased with that. We were very quickly able to launch our first coffee house experience into the Victorian market at Melbourne Central in a kiosk format, and just prior to Christmas we opened our new style coffee house in Western Australia. We’re very happy with the delivery of all the aspects of the project, and with each one of those locations we have sales metrics set that we’re out to achieve. Our results to date have been strong and viable, so we’re very excited about that.

QSR Media: Gloria Jean’s Coffees has invested heavily in the personalization of its brand -- for example, maitre'd in stores. What kind of response are you getting and is this a new approach?
Gareth: It’s not necessarily a new approach. Again, in our research we really found that our guests and customers generally want to know more about what they’re buying and be more involved in the brands from which they’re purchasing. So when we redesigned our roles, we knew that we needed to invest in our people as you can only execute that type of engagement through your team. We have over 7,000 team members in Australia and approximately 14,000 worldwide, so there are a lot of people for us to educate. We wanted to ensure that our team have clearly defined roles, and that’s why we introduced the maitre'd and purveyor roles in addition to our barista, which allows us to provide even greater engagement between our team members and guests.
In this day and age where everybody is tech-savvy and has engaged in some sort of research online, or communicating through new technology platforms, we knew that new technology was to play a role in our coffee houses. We have already run a very successful trial in the South Australian market of our electronic loyalty program. This program will launch across the rest of the country this year, which is another key element of the Coffee House of the Future.

QSR Media: Tell us a bit about your international business and how important this is to the overall Group performance.
Gareth: Our international business has grown greatly over the last few years. We’re really amazed and excited by the level of interest that people from all around world have in the Gloria Jean’s Coffees brand and coffee in general, so it’s really a growth opportunity for us. Our international business is as important to us as all the other parts of our business. And in fact, we drill down further and we look at every individual coffee house. The success of each coffee house in its own particular community and the involvement that it has in that community is critical to the success of the overall business. So even though we are an international company with coffee houses in over 40 markets throughout the globe, we are very much focused on our coffee house communities, as well as their individual performance.