Address Love coffee? Care about ethical sourcing? Great with people? We're looking for a passionate Partnerships Manager to help us grow and support our coffee community. In this role, you'll build strong relationships with our partners, ensure they have top-notch products, and share our love for an ethical coffee industry.
Partnerships Manager
Commonfolk Coffee Company & Kua Coffee
About Commonfolk & Kua
Our mission is to scour the globe for delicious coffee to purchase for a fair price and roasted to perfection for like minded folk. Our vision is to provide quality service and improve the communities we are a part of and have fun while doing it. We aim to create welcome spaces for our community to eat, drink, caffeinate and be merry. We prepare sustainable, quality produce with expertise and good vibes. We take risks and try new things so we can always strive to be the best, without the need to diminish others.
We partner with our coffee producers in a way that is mutually beneficial, seeking long term relationships that pay producers fairly and allow them to continue to grow and provide for their families. We are very proud to have 5 producing relationships that provide over 90% of all the coffee we import, each contributing to our core blends and lots of single origin. Zukuka Bora being very close to our hearts and a project we help establish is now producing fantastic coffee and making positive generational change in Uganda, elevating a forgotten coffee producing nation back to the world of specialty. The charity, The Cup That Counts, runs in parallel with Commonfolk and Kua, supporting projects aimed at making a more sustainable and equitable coffee industry for all.
Our values
There are four key values that shape the way we do things. Building and maintaining our culture is one of our top priorities.
Quality
Quality and accessibility don’t usually go hand in hand... but Commonfolk isn’t your usual enterprise. We’re passionate about producing quality products and providing quality service without all the bullshit and ego. We work hard to be the best because we’re passionate about what we produce, and we want to share that with the common person.
Community
The Folker family are an unorthodox bunch. We celebrate diversity, enthusiasm and empowerment together with collaboration, accountability and support. Our people are our priority and we want to create pathways for our team to exceed their goals. We focus on supporting the most vulnerable members of our community; from local unemployed youth to coffee farmers on the other side of the planet.Our initiative The Cup That Counts helps us ensure our industry is fair for everyone involved. Our clients, customers and wholesalers are an extension of ourselves; if you’re on board with what we’re about, you’re family.
Pioneering
Commonfolk celebrates creativity and lateral thinking. We’re not afraid to look beyond ourselves and our industry for inspiration but we’re considered in what we pursue and how we operate. We stay true to our vision and support each other to push the boundaries of our industry, while taking ourselves lightly and owning our failures. We pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off and try again.
Integrity
At Commonfolk, success means we profit financially, socially and environmentally. We won’t compromise for the sake of profit, ease, or time. Instead we will hold strong to our values and remember that we stand to create something entirely unique in our industry. We encourage our team to harness their collective power to make a difference in our community. We want to participate in and promote sustainable and environmentally conscious enterprise. We want our integrity to be a catalyst for our staff, our customers, our clients and even other businesses to also bring about positive change.
Purpose of the role
The Partnerships Manager is responsible for maintaining strong customer relationships, increasing volume with existing customers and providing exceptional support to our partners at all times. Each account will be immersed into our coffee culture with the absolute intent of expanding wholesale partners' knowledge and understanding of coffee, the relationships we foster with our producers / importers, and our heart for the ongoing support of local and international charity partnerships. They will be responsible for ensuring our coffee partners have industry leading products and support. They will also help maintain the current volume and assist in the growth of future Commonfolk Group brands [Kua, Mana, etc.], and the Commonfolk wholesale and retail training program.
The Partnerships Manager will be the first point of contact for our wholesale partners and will assist the partnerships development manager with prospective partners when required. With touch points at Commonfolk’s Progress St base camp to assist with production and delivery, the Partnerships Manager will focus on working remotely and physically presenting Commonfolk in front of existing and target partnerships.
Success will be benchmarked by partnership retention and growth—ensuring at all times that high level of partner satisfaction is achieved, revenue growth through securing and onboarding new coffee partners, and the expansion of our environmental and social philanthropic endeavours.
About you
You’ll need a driver’s licence (manual preferred) and solid driving record, experience as a barista (with an understanding of commercial espresso equipment) and a passion for quality coffee.
Attributes that will help you kick goals
Communication:
Your local barista describes you as ‘super friendly’ to their colleagues (you’re chatty … and a coffee drinker).
You inspire trust across all relationships by reflecting our core values in decisions and actions.
You actively listen to verbal (and non-verbal) cues from workplace partners to encourage open feedback.
Accountability:
You own the role by delivering on intended outcomes and being transparent with mistakes.
You dive into ‘startup life’ by embracing self-management and facing the unexpected with positivity.
Attention to detail:
You’re a fan of a neatly organised kitchen cutlery draw (you’re detail-oriented).
You get work done by pulling together a clear sequence of steps and yelling when extra resources are needed.
You stamp out problems before they become scary, keeping in constant communication with your team and maintaining systems.
Please send a letter (attached as a PDF) outlining how you deliver on the above attributes alongside a copy of your current resume to *********@commonfolkcoffee.com.au. If writing isn’t your strongest suit, a voice recording or a video is also fine!
A note on diversity
We welcome people from all walks of life to respond. First Nations people, people with disabilities, people from diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds, mature age workers and LGBTI+ folks are all strongly encouraged to apply.
