Team RoCo Blend Program

 Team RoCo Blend Program

By Larisa Stephenson

There’s a Napa Team RoCo Staff. Did you know that? RoCo is short for Roasting Company, and let’s face it…it just rolls off the tongue so easily. Team RoCo strives to include all employees in every step the beans go through once they have been roasted in the Saint Helena shop. Besides selling beans, brewing coffee, and making the drinks, employees are also encouraged to partake in the employee contribution blend program, which is available to all staff members upon finishing their 90-day training period upon hiring.

The Team RoCo blend program is an opportunity for each employee to create their own blend of coffee beans that will then be sold online and in the stores. Employees aren’t just given the bean varietals and allowed to go hog wild. Over time the employee brews and tastes each varietal to learn the various sense profiles, then starts to mix varietals in different percentages, eventually creating a blend of coffee that they enjoy, and believe customers would enjoy as well. Each single varietal coffee offers a unique flavor, and mixing the varietals – blending - offers our senses a new experience each time we brew a cup at home, work, when we travel, camp,…I could go on, but I won’t. This is a great way to help the employee’s knowledge of the varietals, and therefore their overall knowledge of the coffee world.

When the employee is happy with the blend, they come up with three name choices, and present their project to management for tasting. Approval of one of their blend’s names (after Doug has completed a grueling background check and investigation using the skills he learned from the military), and confirmation that they have successfully produced a tasty coffee blend that others will enjoy is a nice accomplishment, and one to be proud of. Their hard work is furthering the success of Team RoCo.

Teamwork is nice, but the other perk to creating your own coffee blend is cold hard cash. For each bag of their blend sold to customers, the employee can earn up to 10% of the sales. Winner, winner, chicken dinner!!...or tofu! You can always have tofu. To help the employees increase their income, and to offer them another outlet for sharing their creative blend, I will be conducting interviews with the employees who have their own blends. We hope you enjoy the interviews over the next few months, and don’t hesitate to ask any employee for more information on any of the blends that NVCRC offers! Check out their blends for sale online: https://napavalleycoffee.com/fresh-roasted-coffee