Leaps & Grounds 2.0
Hello everyone! We’re Seb (he/him) and Cecilia (she/her), the two new leads on Leaps & Grounds. You’ll primarily be hearing from us going forward, but given their love for all things L&Gs, we’re sure Lizzie, Alice, and Bríd will pop back up sooner rather than later… Today, it’s Cecil writing to you all from the comfort of our head office in Moorgate!
Having only joined the British Red Cross at the start of February, Seb and I have had to hit the ground running with L&Gs, and everyone we’ve had the chance to meet so far has been really excited to see the coffee pod back up and running. It’s been a challenging few weeks getting to know how the BRC works, deliver our new coffee pod, and settle in all at once, but we’re really starting to find our feet. Keep reading to hear all about our first couple of weeks with Leaps and Grounds!
First off, thank you so much for all your support for Leaps & Grounds so far! Despite the storms forcing us to close our hatch, we had a fantastic first two weeks, with 100% participant attendance, as well as generating £1,611 in revenue. Our hope is that this income will eventually be enough for us to be self-sustaining and continue growing L&Gs, so make sure you come and grab a coffee next time you’re in Moorgate! You can see a more detailed breakdown below…
As Lizzie O'Sullivan discussed in her last blog, L&Gs has undergone a bit of a rebrand. One of the biggest operational learnings from the pilot was that, in order for L&Gs to be scalable, we needed to hand over the day-to-day running of our coffee pods to professional baristas. So, we’ve hired two part-time pod managers, Alana and Iveta, who have really helped us to continue developing L&Gs into an enterprise that looks and feels “swanky” (Man from Day 1, Feb. 2022). Our hope is that this will allow us to focus our energies on the development of L&Gs as a whole, rather than the day-to-day operations. They’ve been leading the hands-on training of our four participants, and have really taken the mission of L&Gs to heart — not only do they understand the importance of developing the hard skills of our participants, but also their soft skills. Our participants have already begun tackling some of the barriers to employment that we identified during discovery, and it’s really heartening to be able to already see the tangible impacts that this project has.
As we move forward, we’ll be leaving the pod in Alana and Iveta’s capable hands, and look towards the next stages of L&Gs. Some of the main things Seb and I will be looking to explore over the next 12 months include:
- a second, permanent site;
- an events-based model;
- the overall programme structure; and
- various bits of merchandise and products (read: cakes)
As a starting point, we have a lot of assumptions we can take forward from the pilot. But, we’re both really keen to explore the strengths and limitations of this model beyond these assumptions. The great part about our job is — we get to do just that! This year, we’ll be asking question after question after question about the experiences of our participants, volunteers, baristas, customers, suppliers, and everyone else involved in making L&Gs a reality. As Bríd said, it’s all about validation bingo — testing each little bit, and improving with every step.
For example…
We’re working on the assumptions that people like snacks, and that selling snacks alongside our coffees will increase revenue. Although our data at the moment doesn’t seem to show a large uptake in the snack department, we’re keen to continue testing the theory — with a re-opening, storms, and now two tube strikes to contend with, we’re not sure the last few weeks are really representative of what our model might look like in a months time. So, we’re running a voting system where our customers decide what snacks they want to see. We have 500 coloured counters, two jars, and two choices — the winning snack will make an appearance on the cart the following week. Will it work (and what does ‘working’ look like)? Who knows, but there’s only one way to find out…
If you fancy volunteering your time to help promote Leaps & Grounds, are a skilled barista looking to use your days off helping to train our participants, or just fancy being involved in some way, email us at leapsandgrounds@redcross.org.uk and we’ll get back to you!
