Advancement of Women ＋ Collaboration

1) Sojitz Royal Café Corporation was established by Sojitz Corporation and Royal Holdings Co., Ltd as a joint venture company with the purpose of operating and expanding the Costa Coffee café business. Sojitz Royal Café has acquired exclusive franchise rights in Japan for store development and operation of Costa International Limited’s coffee café brand, Costa Coffee.

2) Costa Coffee is a registered trademark of Costa Limited.

Nishio: At the beginning of my career at Sojitz, I joined the Energy Division and worked there for three years. Next, while still in the Energy Division, I was assigned to work on nuclear power projects at two Sojitz Group companies for around five years. I was subsequently placed on another assignment in Paris for the next five years, so I gained experience working in Japan and overseas. In my 16th year at Sojitz (including my time on parental and childcare leave), I asked to transfer to business investments and moved to the Retail Division to collaborate more closely with consumers. Until that point, I had worked exclusively in energy-related businesses, so I was excited to take on new challenges in a different field. This led to my current assignment as Sojitz Royal Café President, where I am involved in the operation and management of Costa Coffee.

Nishihara: I first joined Royal HD in Fukuoka. I have worked in multiple roles—first as store manager at several Royal HD restaurants, next as a brand manager, and finally as a president for a Royal HD Group company. I really value putting smiles on the faces of our customers and was constantly thinking of new ways to raise customer satisfaction. After getting married and having a child, I decided to take the opportunity to gain experience in a new field and transferred to HR. I worked for about nine years in recruitment and employee training. Most recently, I returned to sales. However, in November I was assigned to Sojitz Royal Café where I oversee development of new locations, employee training, and in-store operations.

Nishio: During my career, I took childcare leave and have made efforts to balance both childcare and my career. Thankfully, I receive support from my family, so I can take the time to fully immerse myself in work. When I first joined Sojitz, I was surrounded by many women in management and senior positions who took advantage of childcare leave and continued working while raising children. These women served as my role models and helped me to envision my own future career path. I have always made it my mission to continuously take on new challenges. Sojitz has been an understanding environment that has supported me since I joined the company, so thanks to that I have been able to give 100% to both my working and private life.

Nishio: I am the only original member who has been in Sojitz Royal Café since the initial project formation stage. I knew that we would need some extremely determination expand the Costa Coffee café business into a national franchise. Thanks to the partnership of Sojitz and Royal HD, I think that we can realize a Costa Coffee café franchise by leveraging Royal HD’s supply chain management capabilities in the restaurant business and store operation know-how along with Sojitz’s project management and global networks to promote the development of Costa Coffee café franchises.

I have found that the most difficult thing in this Costa Coffee café business as the franchisee is getting a consensus from British Costa Coffee HQ as there are many stakeholders and related parties involved. Negotiations such as gaining permissions from British HQ have taken some effort. British people have different sensibilities when it comes to food than Japanese people, so it takes us a considerable amount of time for us to convince the British HQ of Japanese people’s food and drink preferences.

Nishihara: Naturally, customer demographics and needs vary from location to location. That being said, it can be quite difficult to provide different products and store environments at each location, so in that aspect I feel like that we have this opportunity to show our uniqueness.

Nishio: I agree. At present, we have developed three Tokyo stores and one Fukuoka store, and we hope to set ourselves apart from other familiar café businesses in Japan through our national expansion efforts and the unique taste of our delicious coffee. All staff in our locations are coffee professionals with specialty barista training. We think this gives us the edge over other chain cafés, as each cup of Costa Coffee is prepared by professionals. Costa Coffee continues to create stores that align with our mission to provide customers with an “uplifting” experience. At Costa, uplifting means giving customers a sense of excitement or elevating their moods. To create an uplifting space, we chose to paint the walls with bright colors like pink, and staff cheerfully interact with customers. We hope that customers are uplifted and by coming to Costa Coffee, rather than providing just a place to relax. Thanks to the addition of COO Nishihara to our team, coordination with our employees has become more active. She has made a major difference in our working atmosphere.

Nishihara: I think that President Nishio ’s best traits are her strength, upbeat personality, and power to draw people in and unify them! President Nishio oversees all our business operations, whereas my role is to ensure we are taking concrete steps towards creating the optimal store experience. Consequently, I frequently interact with employees in our cafés. I am very involved in the selection and training of our baristas, and I believe that staff training is extremely important. I really enjoy overseeing the growth of employees and their attention to detail towards their work at Costa.

Nishio: COO Nishihara is not only involved with training using a top-down approach in Costa Coffee, but she also spends time speaking with employees to get a sense for how they feel. She is a leader who can uplift staff, and she has a particular talent for motivating employees.

Nishihara: I make a conscious effort to keep paths for dialogue open when it comes to employee development. By conversing with employees one-on-one, I can understand their perspectives, efforts, and backgrounds. Once I understand and respect their point of view, I can encourage each employee’s progress. Recently, I acted as a facilitator for an employee training seminar. It has always been a dream of mine to teach, so I felt a real sense of purpose describing my past experiences and career path to the young managers and staff taking part in the training seminar.

Nishio: You have a great career background with a wealth of experiences, not only that but you can use your perspective as a woman in your role. Our core demographic consists of women in their thirties, so we designed our Costa coffee tumblers with women in mind. We designed our tumblers to be functional and easy to hold even when pushing a baby stroller. The tumblers come in a selection of fun colors and sizes that female customers would gravitate towards.

Nishihara: Sojitz Royal Café’s management team consists entirely of women, so debates about new products and designs are very fast-paced as we all have similar sensibilities. Going forward, we want to develop products and business operations tailored to the diverse needs of customers at each of our locations by incorporating perspectives from customers with different careers and experiences.

Nishio: We are currently on track to launch Costa Coffee locations in all 23 wards of Tokyo. In the future, we hope to steadily increase our number of locations and elevate Costa Coffee’s brand recognition in Japan as rapidly as possible so that Costa Coffee can gain a strong foothold here.

Nishihara: Naturally, we plan to expand our network of stores, but we also aim to contribute to society by establishing Costa Coffee as a workplace for initiative-taking baristas with high aspirations to hone their professional skills and earn greater societal recognition. Going forward, we aim to create a brand for Costa Coffee that values one-on-one dialogue with employees, and trains employees so that they can have long careers. We have created a workplace environment that allows young people to thrive. I feel grateful to Royal HD for the opportunities that they have bestowed upon me, so I want to give young employees an opportunity to participate and improve themselves by taking on new challenges.

Nishio: While COO Nishihara and I come from different career backgrounds, we are united in our efforts to achieve a common goal: expanding Costa Coffee in Japan. By blending our individual aspirations and goals to achieve a shared commitment to Costa, I hope that we can together continue to build a company that employees are proud to be a part of. 

Note: Employee titles and affiliations reflect those at the time of the article’s publication.