CASE STUDY: Large Leadership Conference

Client: Major U.S. Franchise Coffee Company

Challenge: Serve 10,000 perfectly brewed cups of coffee in 3 minutes or less? There’s only one team that can make it happen!

Our client’s 2008 leadership conference in New Orleans would bring together 10,000 store managers, directors and corporate leaders for their first conference in more than three years and the first time the company had ever held a conference outside of their home city. The purpose – to celebrate successes, build in new accountabilities through experiential learning galleries, and reignite excitement for – you guessed it – coffee.

Company meeting leaders called on Mary O’Connor and Co., their long-time partner, to repeat the performance they’d mastered at earlier meetings – a massive coffee tasting – but never before on so large a scale. The coffee quality had to be good or better than it is at headquarters, and the coffee experience had to be positively inspiring! Our team was put in charge of all coffee throughout the city, including the Superdome and Arena, Convention Center and at an off-site closing street party. The Arena, where “The World’s Largest and Fastest Coffee Tasting” would be held, was the pivotal point of the entire conference. 10,000 cpmpany partners were to be served a perfectly brewed cup of coffee in less than three minutes!

New Orleans had never dealt with a client quite like ours, so we quickly assembled a cross-functional team of electricians, client company facilities employees, company coffee masters, venue key personnel, plumbers, city water employees and others. All aspects of coffee were put through this team’s rigorous process to ensure the integrity of the perfect cup of coffee. Each venue was put through multiple tests to ensure speed, consistency and quality, despite the challenge that each had different brewing equipment and water filtering processes, and none had enough equipment to handle 10,000 coffee drinkers. The Mary O’Connor team kept track of it all to the nth degree: equipment brought in, type of electrical needed, type of filters needed, which coffee was served where, how much was needed, who was in charge of each item, and when everything needed to be in place.

Because of our team’s experience with the client, the ability to manage a cross-functional team with members living in different time zones across the U.S., the project management skills to keep everyone on task, and Mary’s uncanny ability to anticipate every detail… every cup of coffee served in New Orleans (over 26,700 pounds of coffee, or more than 250,000 cups) exceeded our clients’ expectations! The event culminated with a speed of service record led by MOC and Co. and 10,000 fresh, perfectly brewed cups of coffee served in 2 minutes, 31 seconds!