Case Study: Caribou Coffee builds a winning culture, boosts employee engagement and cuts turnover with Service Management Group (SMG)

Caribou Coffee builds a winning culture with five key employee engagement practices

Caribou Coffee faced a challenge turning voluminous employee survey data into clear, actionable steps to strengthen culture across its 6,000+ team members. To simplify and focus their approach, Caribou partnered with Service Management Group (SMG), leveraging SMG’s Employee Engagement measurement and Associate Voice® program to capture associate feedback and link it to guest experience data.

With SMG’s insights, Caribou implemented five focused practices—proving the business case, targeting key engagement drivers, setting follow-through goals, fueling momentum with summits and pulse surveys, and making engagement a top-down priority—which delivered measurable results: a 27 percentage-point difference in engagement change between low and high follow-through groups, 18 percentage points lower annualized turnover at highly engaged coffeehouses, a 1% lift in comp sales, and a 2-point higher Guest OSAT. SMG’s measurement and action-focused guidance enabled Caribou to prioritize interventions, empower managers, and improve both culture and business performance.

Caribou Coffee

Renee Auseth

Senior Manager of Total Rewards and HR Innovation